One week ago today, my fourth grandchild was born. She is the first child of my last child; the baby girl of my baby girl. Yes, I am a happy grandma and a very proud mama, 
but why does being a Grandma mean more to me than any other role I have ever held? I would say that most likely has something to do with my Grandma, my namesake, Margaret “Ellen” Savage Rebman.
We learn by example. I learned much from my childhood and my grandparents. Both of my grandmas were named Margaret, but my mother’s mother used our mutual middle name as her first. Everyone called her “Ellen,” but for me and three other very special children, she was “Grandma.”
My father’s mother had experienced a severe car accident in a Mustang convertible that left her in a wheelchair for as long as I can remember. My childhood memories of visiting “Grandma King” as she would be known for the last surname she acquired by marriage, were filled with the strange smells and sights of retirement homes. I wish I would have had a chance to know the woman who I hear from my uncle spent summers vacationing in Canada hunting with my grandfather. But that woman was a distant memory by the time I was old enough to carry on a conversation with my Grandmother.
My mother’s mother was an entirely different story. My childhood memories are full of beachcombing trips and my first time on a salmon charter boat complete with my grandparents and mom.
My Grandma and Grandpa (Ellen and John) lived on the beach in a cove on Hood Canal at the base of Puget Sound in a little place called Union, Washington. It was a slice of heaven. They moved to Olympia to be closer to their great-grandchildren after my second child was born, but my memories of them were on the Canal.
A CB Radio handle she adopted fit her well, “Beachcomber” fit Grandma as well as “Monkey” fit me. Many of the summer days I spent with my grandma were on the beach in front of their home. Grandpa had built a dock jutting out of the bulkhead between their home and their neighbor’s summer home. It was the perfect place to fish off the end of and catch the ugliest fish you ever saw… but grandma’s cats loved them.
The cats grandma allowed me to feed my catches to were actually strays. As an adult I now realize being so close to the water, the only way to keep rats away was to keep cats around. My grandma was pretty smart that way about a lot of things.
Ten days before I turned forty, my second son and his girlfriend became the proud parents of a baby boy, Aydin. My first grandchild and only grandson to this day. He changed my life by making me a grandma. 
Very soon after Aydin was born, his mother decided to continue her education. By taking a class here and there, she could continue to be active in school, yet still feel she was fulfilling her duty to her son. I agreed to help out.
The daily traveling to my baby grandson’s home, then taking his mom to school and spending time with him and sometimes my mother who worked on campus was an incredible opportunity to bond with my grandson. This also allowed Aydin’s great-grandma to see him much more than she would have had an opportunity to if we weren’t visiting her at work. A few hours a day, every weekday for a three month period of time, I had “grandma duty.”
In 2010, I finally had the opportunity to meet my twin granddaughters, Saphira and Serulea, daughters of my estranged firstborn son and his wife. They were just getting ready to turn two years old. The girls were living with their mother’s mother, Mary, and their little sister B.
Our visits have gotten more frequent over the years. Currently, we live only about a mile apart and we TRY to go to church together each Sunday. It is a crazy new experience for me to live just down the road from these now preteen girls and we are having a lot of fun getting to know one another.
As I held my daughter’s daughter last week… this precious new life… I reflected on what being a grandma means to me. What “duty” do I have to these little girls and one lonesome boy?
I am a different woman than I was when Aydin was born. Jaina’s grandma will not be the same woman Aydin’s grandma was. I’m eleven years older than I was back then. But I am younger.
When Aydin was born, I was living out of a bed. My arm always had a fabric band on it to protect him from coming into contact with the deadly narcotic that kept me able to be active at all. When Aydin came into the world, my body was heavily dependant on the pain management of opiates.
In 2009, when Aydin was three, I said farewell to opioids. It was “grandma duty” that got me out of bed during severe withdrawals and gave me the impetus to keep on trying. One week ago, I saw my daughter display more strength than I thought possible when from her tiny frame she gave birth naturally to the most perfect little angel I have ever met.
My grandchildren are my heart and soul. They are my mirrors. I anxiously await the journeys we shall experience together. I am just thankful to Heavenly Father I am here to be able to get to know these wonderful little people He has seen fit to share with my family.
Every choice I make is seemingly up for public scrutiny purely based on my un-housed status. The fact is, before I was using cannabis I didn’t have the energy or strength to get out of bed, let alone travel the country. It was the use of the herb that allowed me my freedom: Once I had conquered the need for physical comfort my options regarding my living circumstances opened up. Until I left that disability bed zoned out on narcotics, I had not travelled hardly at all. Making the choice to travel, to be homeless, allowed me to get out of my home state of Washington and visit the country from one end to the other!
I have HOPE. I live with faith. I know that I have a Heavenly Father who loves me and watches over me. Using that hope and faith, I am working on bettering myself. When I realized that strangers would actually be interested in reading what I write, I took it upon myself to start a program at a college with an online presence, Southern New Hampshire University, to finish my Bachelor’s degree with a focus on nonfiction writing. It was time to learn how to use this gift God gave me.
About 4 years prior to that breakdown, while I was still on Fentanyl, percocet, neurontin (gabapentin), and 16 other medications, a friend asked me if I had ever tried marijuana for my pain. I had used it as a teenager, then as a young adult when I wanted to drink and party with my friends, noticing it’s anti-emetic properties allowed me to drink when I was taking medications I should not have been drinking with (my bad!), but I had put my “stash” far away when I began having pain that completely ruined my life… overtaking every aspect, finally putting me in bed. It was in that bed that I lived. A life consisting of watching DVDs from the library (I could check out an entire season of a television program at a time) and Netflix. When I could focus. When I said to my friend, “but won’t it make me unable to do anything?” She told me to look around at my life. That was a sobering experience. 
were ready to put their license on the line by recommending it (the marijuana alternative to “prescriptions” due to the federal illegality it can not be “prescribed”). So, they referred me to a specialist that JUST recommended marijuana.
Harley Davidson (2002 Low Rider)! Riding on the wind was so much more freedom than I could have imagined. My disabilities still had me bed-bound 5/7th of the week, but for 2 days each week I felt like I was LIVING again!
The paramedics arrived, taking my blood pressure both they and I were surprised I was conscious: 50/30 are numbers I won’t forget. After they loaded me up and took me into the hospital, my husband at the time demanded my release before I could be admitted to a rehab, he needed me at home was the excuse. The nurses looked at me like a junkie. They all looked at me as an addict, not as someone who was dependant on a medication prescribed by the doctor… I felt lower than dirt and went home with a prescription of clonidine (a blood pressure medication to LOWER my blood pressure from the impending pain) knowing I would likely be committing suicide to take it.
My pain was MUCH better, lowering to about a 6 or a 7 within a half hour… then I began LIVING!!! Out of bed, I started looking around me to see what I was missing. I was missing out on LIFE!
Somehow, through the Grace of God, I was able to put my MASSIVE social anxiety aside and get on a train, then a bus and a plane, finally in my own vehicle to visit many of them. What I found was that all around the country there were people like me in pain physically and emotionally who needed a reason to live. A reason and a method to Stand Up To Live. That is why I travel to this day: To show it can be done.
