It’s funny how some words stay with you. These words screamed at me by my wild-eyed

, upset as all~get- out Mema knocked sense into me when I needed it the most and now the words are carved into my heart.

I didn’t get sympathy, I didn’t get tearful coaxing or understanding and I thank God I didn’t.

I got exactly what I needed-the hard, nitty-gritty truth spoken-no, SCREAMED at me.

When my Mema walked into my bedroom and found what I had written in a spiral notebook, she was so mad, so riled up that she looked straight at me, those blue eyes blazing as she screamed,” You gonna do that?!?! Well, go ahead, but you might as well kill your momma first cause that’s what you’ll be doing anyway!”

“You might as well just take me and your Papa Daddy out,too, if you gonna kill yourself, go ahead and kill us first- you just might as well!”

I had seen my Mema get mad plenty of times but not like this- she was screaming at me, throwing her hands up in the air, pure anger in her eyes while her voice quivered as she spat the words out.

“Go ahead, Jeanna Lynn, you might as well!”

She grabbed the spiral notebook, read my farewell letter again and my carefully drew out picture and detailed funeral instructions and ripped the pages out and torn them into pieces all the while screaming and yelling at me.

“ That’s what you want to do?!?! Go ahead, just go ahead – you might as well but first you better kill us!”

I started bawling and squalling- tears running down my face, my whole body shaking as I managed to choke out the words, “ I couldn’t do that to y’all. I love y’all too much.”

“ That’s how you gonna show us that you love us- by doing something like that?!?”

“You might as well not even love us at all then if you gonna do us like that!”

Oh, sweet Jesus, you had to have known my Mema and you had to have known me to understand.

I was in the 6th grade and it had been too many long, hard years in elementary school.

I was the hard of hearing skinny little girl with glasses- four eyes -and not a single friend.

I had finally had enough- enough of the mean teachers that claimed I was faking my hearing loss for attention, enough of the mean girls that ganged up on me and grabbed my glasses and tossed them to each other, enough of the boys that would run up, yelling “Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang” making fun of my name- Jeanna Bain.

I had enough of running outside to climb trees and hide within the leaves so I wouldn’t get bullied but also so I wouldn’t feel so alone.

I didn’t have any friends but I wanted one so badly. Just one would have been enough- it would have meant everything.

But at lunch time in the cafeteria, kids would push their chairs close together and tell me that I couldn’t sit with them – because they didn’t have room for “ a stupid girl that can’t hear or see.”

At the beginning of the school year, I had tried- thinking that maybe over the summer they had changed because I had but it actually gotten worse.

If I bought my lunch, I would get tripped as I walked to the furthest table to sit by myself. If I faced the group of kids, they would exaggerate their faces and make sure I read their lips.

“Nobody wants you here, Jenny, nobody likes you!”

If I sat with my back to them, they would throw food into my hair, spit balls through straws and walk out of their way to hit me in the back of the head just as I took a drink.

That’s why I asked Mema to make sack lunches for me and she did – with such love and thought and detail and I hardly ate any of it.

She would wrap a Pepsi can in aluminum foil, boil an egg and wrap in foil, make a big thick sandwich and wrap in foil and then tuck a Hershey bar in between the cold things.

I would rush outside as soon as the lunch bell rang and climb a tree holding the sack between my teeth and when I got to my favorite branch, I would lean back and stretch my legs out and put my lunch between my legs.

Sometimes I would nibble the egg and the sandwich but most of the time, I would just pop the top on the Pepsi and drink it between bites of candy as I watched the kids playing on the playground.

I was safe up there because I could see anyone that came up the hill and I was close enough to the back door so I could run inside as the bell rang.

I would often come home with the crumbled sack lunch filled with what I hadn’t eaten and Mema would give this deep sigh,” Jeanna Lynn, WHY didn’t you eat all this good food I made for you?!”

She loved me fiercely and that’s why she just about lost her mind when she read my letter.

In careful handwriting using my beloved Bic pen with the different colored inks I had written down that I wanted to be laying on my beach towel, in my favorite bright bikini with a bottle of Coppertone sun tan oil.

I listed all my reasons for doing what I planned to do and added “ they will be sorry when they see me like this.”

Then I had written with tears blurring the ink how much I loved them and would miss them and my cousin, Jeff, but that I knew they would be better off without me to “mess with.”

I had expected to be able to do this secretly- and cleanly- which tells you how much I knew.

I had it all figured out. I would do it when my Papa Daddy was on a business trip because I knew he wouldn’t let me get hurt- even if I did it to myself.

I would wait until my Momma was asleep so she wouldn’t get upset with the mess I made.

I forgot that Mema picked the lock on my door and would push my desk that I used to block the door to the ground.

Nothing stopped Mema when she was mad or worried-not a single thing and for that, I will always be grateful.

We didn’t talk about that day again for a long, long time but one day, she was sitting next to me on the couch and she patted my leg and looked at me and said, “i love you to pieces…you just about scared the shit out of me that time. Don’t ever do that again,”

I leaned onto her and we both knew exactly what she was talking about.

Now I look at this beautiful life I’ve been living and I can’t help but think about something else she had said when she read my letter about them “ being sorry they did this”.. she had said to me, “It doesn’t matter what they say or do, it matters what YOU say and do!”

She taught me to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be…without leaning on anyone else. She taught me that real friends stayed around all the time, not just during summer breaks when school was out and nobody knew that you had spent hours playing with the “ deaf and dumb” girl.

Mema also taught me to hide my hearing impairment- until it was “ necessary” because she knew people would underestimate me if they knew I couldn’t hear.

Somehow I managed to get through elementary and junior high school by the skin of my teeth and by coming home to listen to Mema talking.

By the time, I reached high school I was pretty good at hiding my hearing loss, really good at lip reading and even better at building walls and not having anyone get close enough to really know me.

It took me a long, long time to become friends with women.

I’m still a bit distant- I am still amazed when I’m invited to sit at the table with others, I’m still surprised when I get a gift that doesn’t turn out to be broken on purpose, and I’m still grateful when I realize that I could have missed all this.

So I might as well tell the story because someone just might need to know that it’s worth waiting for things to change and to go ahead and be brave even when it’s hard as the dickens.