Proud, tender and fiercely independent, an aging matriarch clings to her home.
By Beth Macy
published Monday, April 21, 2008
Lucille “Big Mama” Blackwell is 83 years old and 273 pounds. She has diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure and congestive heart failure.
Her doctor has said she should be in a nursing home, that she needs around-the-clock care.
“Get outta my face with that!” she recalls telling him. “If God has spared me to have a little home, then I want to live in it.” Die in it, too.
Lucille "Big Mama" Blackwell readies a dose of insulin, watched by her sister Elizabeth Stokes (center) and home-care aide Benita Taylor.
Big Mama dispenses wisdom freely to strangers and family alike, most of it gleaned from the Holy Bible she keeps next to her favorite recliner.
She’s had to memorize the verses, though. A third-grade dropout, she never learned to read or write.
Among Big Mama’s favorites is a verse from Timothy: “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
That, to her way of thinking, means: Take care of your own.
Big Mama has spent nearly all her life doing just that. Working as sharecroppers on a southern Virginia tobacco farm, she and her husband raised 13 children — five of their own, the rest nieces, nephews and grandchildren.
But now she’s widowed and lives alone in her Rugby area home. Relatives are in and out, helping as best they can. And Medicaid pays a personal-care aide for 25 hours a week to cook, clean and help her bathe.
But when her patchwork of helpers comes unraveled, as it routinely does, Big Mama worries: Who will take care of her?
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Technorati
What a wonderful lady!
Her can do attitude puts us all on notice to hang in and keep on keepin' on! Wish her and her family well.
I agree...
There wasn't a visit with Big Mama in which I wasn't reminded to
A.) Call my mother more often; and
B.) Go to church.
She was right on the calling my mother bit -- in fact, I remember calling her once on the way home from Ms. Blackwell's house.
Visiting Big Mama was like going to church, though, maybe even better.
Someone who prays for the person who steals from them? There aren't many like that.
Thanks to readers who wrote offering to pick up orange juice for her!
Beth
AGE OF UNCERTAINTY
ARTICLE ON LUCILLE "BIG MAMA" BLACKWELL. THIS LADY I HAVE KNOW FOR OVER TWENTY YEARS. AT ONE TIME SHE WAS A MEMBER OF THE GARDEN OF PRAYER #6 CHURCH OF GOD IN CHRIST. UNDER THE LAST PASTOR LONNIE E. WILSON.
WHENEVER I COME TO ROANOKE TO VIST MY DAUGHTER AND SON-IN-LAW, REV. EARNEST ANDERSON AND HIS WIFE CO-PASTOR CHENISE ANDERSON ALONG WITH THEIR NEW ADOPTED CHILD, LASHAUNDA ELIZABETH ANDERSON. I MAKE IT MY GREAT NUMBER ONE PLAN TO GO AND SEE "MAMA BLACKWELL AS WE CALLED HER.
EVEN THOUGHT TIME HAS MADE GREAT CHANGES IN OUR BODIES SHE IS STILL A STRONG PERSON TO TALK TO AND SHE ALWAYS HAVE A GOOD WORD TO TELL YOU. I KNOW THE FELLING OF "AGE OF UNCERTAINTY" BECAUSE I HAVE A MOTHER WHO HAS ALZHEIMER AND WE HAD TO MAKE THE SAD PLAN OF PUTTING HER IN A HOME FOR HER SAFETY.
I KNOW THAT ONE DAY I WILL REACH THAT GOAL IN LIFE AS THE SAY "GOLDEN YEAR'S" BUT THE PLAN FOR MY LIKE IS AN "AGE OF UNCERTAINTY" ALSO.
THE ARTICLE WAS A GREAT ONE AND I THANK YOU FOR FEATURING A PERSON SUCH AS SHE. JEANNETTE M. WILSON, CRAWFORDVILLE, GA
Thanks, Ms. Wilson,
for your insights on Ms. Blackwell. She's IS so wise, you're right. (She still speaks fondly of her pastor Lonnie Wilson, you'll be glad to know.)
I'm glad you get to visit her when you come home to Roanoke.
Thanks again for the supportive note. Beth