My Oma

My Oma

There are so many reasons to love being a dad. There are goodnight kisses, long hugs, birthday parties, vacations, the things they teach us and that certain warmth and love you just can’t get anywhere else.

Then also, there are the things we don’t love. One such thing would be exactly what I had to do tonight. Tonight, I’d have to tell my eight year old that her Oma had passed away. Tonight was gonna be hard.

I thought about it all day. How would she take it? How would she react? How would I react? I’m the strong one for her, right? Even though, Hannah's never experienced anything like this before, I haven’t experienced it enough to be comfortable passing on bad news. But it's got to be done. I'm the one that's got to do it. And so I did.

Last night, Sept 14, 2009, I lost , I mean, we lost, someone very dear to us. "We" are the friends and family of Norphlete Slade Deaver. Although at some point she may have, she never went by any such formal name during my lifetime.

She was Mama to her kids.
She was Sister Norphlete to her church.
She was Nawphlete to friends and some family.
She was PiPete to much of her family.
Aunt PiPete to Lissa's crew.
And just Pete to her late husband, my grandfather, Wesley Beaty Deaver.

But to me she was none of those people. She was more. She was never Norphlete, PiPete, Grandma, Grandmother or any other variation. She was simply Oma.

A child gives names to all its favorite things. They name their pets. They name their stuffed animals. They name their dolls. They may even name their imaginary friends. But either way, they name some of their favorite things. I named my Oma.

I’m not really sure where I came up with that name, but I did.

If I had to guess, I’d say that maybe as a child I heard my mother talk to her and she may have said “Oh, Mama” right about the time my little ears and brain started working together to figure things out. Maybe I put the two together and went from “Oh, Mama” to the much easier to pronounce “Oma”. Maybe I looked at my mom as “Mama” and her as “Old Mama”. Who knows? It really doesn’t matter. What matters is at that moment I was naming one of my favorite things, my Oma.

She's been my Oma since day one. My sister, Amanda, picked it up from me. And Oma's husband, Wesley, was always Poppa. Poppa never quite adopted the name Oma. He hung onto Pete for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I'd hear him let an "Awe-Ma" slip out because he just didn't understand that there was only one proper way to pronounce it. It was my name for her. So of all people, I should know. I should be the one to say how you say it. Right? And as far as I'm concerned I am.

Well, once again, the reason tonight was gonna be more painful than it already had to be, was because tonight (the day after her passing) I had to tell my little girl, Hannah, that her Oma was gone. Hannah loved her Oma. She'd go visit her either with me or with my mom, Michele, at the "apartment" in Columbia.

Hannah would just talk and talk and talk. She'd tell Oma about anything and everything in great detail. And Oma would just go right along with it all.

Although the visits exactly frequent, they were very very good. I'm so happy, for both of them, that Hannah got to know her Oma. Hannah's got her memories, as I have mine. Hannah's memories are obviously of the older, less active, version. But they’re filled with the same things mine are. Soft skin, big hugs, a warm heart and lots and lots of attention.

Even though Oma probably couldn't keep up with the all the talk and all the stories, she tried. Hannah will remember the apartment being about half an hour or so from Nammy's house. How they'd go up from time to time and spend the afternoon. Hannah will remember loving all up on her Oma.

My memories are very different. My memories are of when she lived up on the hill. My memories, like her name, are my own. They are special to me. I will remember watching the lights of the interstate from the back porch. Trying to hold the antenna just right to tune-in that old radio. How we made things out of wood for that country store she had that time. I will remember going swimming at the creek. Her bad chili. That powdered milk and puffed rice she always kept instead of Sugar Smacks. The time I fell out of her fridge and busting my teeth out. Sitting on that old crooked oak limb down by the barn. Brother Travis coming to visit on Sundays if her foot was bothering her. How she'd let me jiggle that soft part under her arms. Planting flowers around the pine tree in my own flower bed. Her sitting me up on the tracter. Us walking to Mamaws or going to visit Doyle and Ruby. I will remember her telling me to wait and count before I'd answer that telephone because it was a party line and we had to make sure it was for us.

She called my mama “Shell” and all the others a mixture of "Mih... Mah... Meh..." before she’d land on the right name (most of the time). I will remember always having turnip greens and pork chops at her house because we were gonna “celebrate”. The way she wrapped our record albums at Christmas time and we still pretended we didn't know what they were. The time she and Poppa gave me that peanut butter jar full of change, that turned out to hold a lot more than they expected. The times she kept me when my mom was working at the bank and my dad was on a “shut down”.

That time Santa figured out that I would stay at her house on Christmas Eve. We put race tracks together the next morning. How we'd play the game of “Trouble” and she'd always want to be the green piece. And how she'd get upset when me and Mel played “Gnip Gnop” because it was so frazzlin' loud. How her "ugly words" were “frazzlin’” and "fiddle". How we'd spend all evening setting up dominoes and she's get all excited with me when I'd knock them down. How we made cassette tapes of me talking as a kid. And I used to run to her when Poppa would scare me by trying to slap my hand when I'd wake him.

She used to watch The Fued every night. Then one day that turned into The Golden Girls. And eventually “Andy Griffith”. We'd go "yard sellin’" with my mama and Mamaw. We'd go to downtown Hattiesburg and park and walk up to the Penney's to go school shopping. Usually we'd end up at Gibson's and she’d let me look through the toy aisle.

She taught me how to look things up in those World Books. I think every school report I ever did was done with those World Books. I was probably doing papers in the 80s with facts from the 60s, but it was ok. I turned out alright.

She'd fly up and down the road in that big old Plymouth and hold the horn down till she was way out of site. I went with her to buy the Crown Vic that she drove just as fast.

The way she'd start a conversation. "Now, Jay?" Or “Now, Jaysonmerrill!”, as she used to correct me. But I knew her tones. They were different. I could tell them apart. Just like when she was acting surprised she'd widen here eyes, make an "o" with her mouth and say "whoo-hoo". But if she were in the back of the house and I yelled "Oma" I'd hear "whoooo-ooo-hoooo".

I spent a lot of time with her as a kid. We shelled peas. We went on walks. I’d slide down the hill while she watched. I used to talk to her about the bad stuff. And I would talk to her about the good stuff. She was the first person I went to when I decided to get married.

She was my Oma and I was her Jay. Now, those are my memories. And I'm thankful that I have them and all the others in my heart. I'm sure anyone else has their own. Those are theirs. When Poppa died in 1990, Oma told me something that I've never forgotten. She said "Now, Jay. People don't really die until we quit remembering them and quit talking about them. So we're gonna keep talking about Poppa every chance we get, just like he's in there asleep in his chair." And we did. And we will talk about her too.