The Life of Calla Della Jacobs - Part 4b, The Move to Kokomo, Indiana

Grandma had a stroke after undergoing a gall-stone operation in the fall of 1958. The family visited her in the hospital the evening of the stroke. She was cheerful, excited that she was to be released the next day. They called in the middle of the night, and we rushed to the hospital to find a different person. She lay there limp, her head to the side, eyes open and mouth agape - no response, no sign of recognition. Things were never the same. She was paralyzed on her right side and lost the ability to speak. Words came in a meaningless tangle. She eventually stopped trying to talk, getting by on grunts and shaking her head as we played twenty questions. Even that could be confusing as she would often shake her head “yes” when she meant “no” and visa versa.

Grandma lived another ten years in that sad condition, ever confined to bed or a wheel chair. Her right hand was shriveled from disuse, and she kept it buried under a small towel We tried to keep her at home those first years, but she required assistance for even the most basic of functions.

For a while her four children chipped in to hire a lady to care for her. Hazel Williams, a black lady, worked with Grandma for nearly a year. Hazel was recently widowed, and lived only a few blocks away. She probably needed the money, and we all liked her. She was robust and cheerful, cooked for the family, did some house work, and was Grandma’s constant companion. Grandma really loved her, and was happy, but Hazel was too expensive, and none of the children had the wherewithal to sustain the cost, so they had to let her go.

We tried letting her stay alone in the house with someone looking in now and then. One day I came home to find her sitting in the living room floor. The front door had blown open and she had gotten out of the wheelchair and crawled over to shut it, but was trapped for several hours. I remember to this day the big tears running down Grandma’s cheeks as she sat in the wheelchair begging to be allowed to stay at home. We couldn’t understand her words, but we knew what they meant.

The ordeal was starting to show on Mom. She was running herself sick, so we moved Grandma to Connersville, close to her other children, where she bounced from one rest home to another. She stayed a couple years, but was never happy. She wanted to go home.

We brought her back in 1966. She stayed at the Good Samaritan nursing home on Vaile Street, and we could take her for rides and home for visits. I stopped to see her and say goodbye when I left for Alaska in June of 1967. She signaled her amazement that I was traveling so far, and seemed to know that it was to be our last meeting. Grandma Frank died on January 30th of the following year. She was 84 years, 8 months and 7 days old.
THE END
GO TO: The Story of Grandma's Mother's Parents, the Baileys