My Grandmother Died And Left Me A Porcelain Doll…Why Does It Have A Human Tongue?

My grandmother died a few weeks back at the ripe old age of 85, passing away peacefully in her sleep. By all accounts, she lived a damn good life, and I tried my very best to make it so. Lord knows she did the same for me.

This has been a difficult post for me to write. You see, when a treasured loved one dies, especially one that you grew up with, the little solar system of your life is thrown completely out of orbit. Not that mine was ever all that stable in the first place.

My parents died in a car accident when I was two years old, and I was a little too young at the time to fully absorb the emotional impact of being orphaned. When the prospect of being put into the foster system was brought up by the family lawyer, grandma took me in without a second thought. Her home was our home; it’s where I built my childhood.

Honestly, you’d never meet a more charitable woman than my grandma. From the second I came into her life, all the way up to her death (and even beyond) she’s provided for me without fail.

Another interesting thing about grandma is the fact she was mute. I’m not talking about selective mutism here, I’m talking full-blown, constant silence. I’ve known that woman for my entire 32 years of life, and while I got used to it within a few months, to some it seems crazy that I never heard a word from her.

Of course, we had our own ways of communicating back then. I picked up sign language pretty quickly, as kids tend to, and she always used to write on this little chalk board for me. I thought it was awfully cute at the time.