Margaret Plumlee Cagle, my Granny, at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, TN, 1942/43
**Preface: I finished writing this just before my Granny Cagle passed. She passed away early this morning, February 15, 2020. I haven’t gone back to edit this, so I speak as though she’s still alive.**
What does a “life well-lived” mean? What does it mean to live a “successful” life? I’ve been pondering this as my Granny, Margaret Cagle, has been approaching her final days and minutes. If we base it off of the commercialized world, a well-lived life is seen in someone who has traveled the world, experienced various cultures, owns a grand house with grand furnishings, perhaps made millions of dollars, invented something, started a business or has a massive amount of schooling under his or her belt.
I dare say many of us, if we realllly think about it, know what it truly means to witness or fulfill a “life well-lived.” That is, when we feel loved, we love many others, we have purpose, we are leaving or have left our mark in some capacity, even if it doesn’t look the way we planned or the way society deems it should look. Even if it’s just setting an example of determination, gratitude, honesty or departing the best meat loaf recipe to your children and grandchildren. Thanks, Granny.
My Grandmother left her mark in numerous capacities—on her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, her students and almost everyone she encountered.
She was a mother, a daughter, a human, a mathematician, a teacher, a Christian, a friend, a gardener, an athlete, a farmer, a cook, a tutor, a singer, a student and I could just keep on listing. None of us should define ourselves by one word, and she certainly didn’t. We’re always evolving, always changing and (hopefully) improving. I think that’s one of the reasons I wanted to grow up and be like my Granny (and still want to). There just didn’t seem to be anything she couldn’t do or wouldn’t try. She is a life-long learner, but also a life-long teacher.
Granny felt like some untouchable hero, an idol—a famous person to me. How could anyone be as impressive as Granny? I didn’t sense this in exactly the normal way a child might idolize their parent or grandparent, but in the way you might feel about a total stranger you revere, like a celebrity or renowned inventor. This feeling sustained over the years and did not dwindle as I aged. Despite her celebrity status in my eyes, she also always felt ‘on my level’ in some way—always present and available. Sometimes literally physically on our level, as she would poke and prod the dirt in her garden, teach us how to dig up potatoes, pick beans and plant flowers. She’d also throw softballs and maybe do a few cartwheels. She would arm-wrestle her children, and give piggy-back rides to grandchildren and great grand-children until at least 80 years old. She would often be holding a video camera in hand, documenting all of us. I wish I had done a better job documenting her.
She never stopped learning, she never stopped pushing to do more and be more, and to be there for others, to teach others and to be taught by others. She received her masters degree when she was almost 60 years-old, coincidentally on the same day, one of her daughters, Margie (aka Margaret, aka my Mom) received her undergraduate degree. Margaret Cagle and Margaret Cagle graduating on the same day. The school ended up mismatching some information about each one of them in the ceremony.
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This blip of writing was supposed to be about how I’m searching for meaning in my Grandmother’s looming death. Everything I say just doesn’t seem to come out right. It all feels icky and sticky and cliche. I can’t get it off of me. At the moment I am writing this, the nurse says she could pass at any moment. I thought she was going to pass days ago. We all did. Anyone would have thought that based on her state. She hasn’t had any food or basically any water in a week.
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My Granny was born on January 8th, 1923. Yes, do the math. That makes her 97 years old. She began high school at 12-years-old, college at Tennessee Tech University at 16, and before she was 20 she taught college math courses, including a trigonometry course for a United States Air Force unit. (I think many of the school gals were jealous of her teaching the young Air Force men). I wish I could have seen my barely five-feet-tall Granny in action. I’m sure her hair was poofed sky-high, and she sported high-heeled pumps with a swatch of bold lipstick on her lips.
After two years of college, she was unable to afford schooling any longer, so she left to teach school back home. Not so fast, Granny.
T.J. Farr, the dean of the College of Education at Tech personally visited my Granny’s home to convince her to return and guarantee her a job to help fund her education at Tech. (Fun Fact: Farr has a historic building named after him on Tech’s campus that I frequented when I attended Tech myself. I literally never connected it in my head until just now that T.J. Farr was of course that T.J. Farr).
In an essay she wrote about herself later while applying for a teaching certificate at age 55, she explained, “Being the eldest of five children, I always keenly felt that position in the family. In addition, my sister was considered prettier than I, and this spurred me to make my mark as a scholar.” Ha, oh Granny. Though the later statement in this is entirely not true, even if people did say such a thing (as I can unbiasedly say she’s always been a beautiful gal), she indeed took her education immensely seriously and never stopped learning throughout her life.
She worked at Langley Air Force Base (the location of the movie “Hidden Figures”) on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics as a mathematician. She also later worked at Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. during the Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb for those who are unaware). My Grandfather, her husband, also worked there, and specifically on The Manhattan Project, among other assignments.
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I’ve never sat by someone literally on their deathbed. Their body shutting down, they don’t look like themselves, they look like some leftover part of what or who they were, eyes affixed to the ceiling or some invisible object in the upper corner. I never knew exactly what happened to the human body as it is truly, rapidly approaching its end. I don’t like saying any of this. I don’t want to describe it all because I feel like that would be disrespectful to my genuinely always beautiful and classy grandmother.
I mean, you just can’t have people over if your hair isn’t fixed and you don’t have the proper lipstick on. To quote myself from a post recently, “Whenever I’d visit my Granny while growing up, I could always tell which coffee cup was hers, as the rim was draped in half-moon swoops of deep pinky reddish lipstick.” So, we’ll leave some pieces out.
Maybe this process is all okay. This is just part of life. Death is inevitably apart of life. I mean, unless Elon Musk comes up with some magic pill for us to live forever, likely on Mars. But I think we tend to hide from, avoid, and throw hush-hush tones and a comfy blanket over death and the dying. I think that’s why we don’t like going to nursing homes and sometimes we accidentally abandon those who we’ve placed there or who we know there. Maybe it reminds of us what is to come for ourselves or other loved ones. Maybe we think they don’t have much left to offer us.
We should not discount those who are “dying.” Do not think they haven’t anything to offer you or that you don’t have anything to offer them. I read that hearing is usually one of the last senses to go, so talk to them. Sing. Play music. We certainly have been doing so with my Granny, even if a bit off-key. I just received word that a couple folks who have been family-friends for years upon years came over with a guitar and sang songs to Granny. Magical.
The sense of touch usually remains near the end as well. Hold their hand, touch their face, make them feel human.
Also, not to be morbid, but we’re all dying, we’re just all at different stages. So, there you go. Something we all have in common. Welcome to life as a human: you’re dying. Now you have something to talk about with strangers.
Alright, we’re going on too many tangents here.
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Things can still be funny when a loved one is dying though. One of my aunt’s said to my Granny while standing at the side of her bed, “We love you to death!” And then she gasped and covered her mouth. “Why did I say that?! What a dumb thing to say!” she thought, when someone is literally dying. “To death.” My Granny would laugh at that, and I’m sure she did laugh in her head at my silly Aunt.
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In times like this, when you’re watching a loved one die, you want to gain something positive. You want to gain some huge grand wisdom, change your life, change someone else’s life. Some something. Maybe we’re always searching for something to kick us in the pants to get us to do the thing that we’ve always known we should do. To say the thing we’ve always meant to say. I know there is much to glean from experiencing someone actively dying in front of you. Someone you know and loved and idolized.
I’ve been rereading a book that was one of my Granny’s favorites: “The Thread That Runs So True” by Jesse Stuart. It’s a true story, written autobiographically about a mountain school teacher, set in (I think) the 1920’s and maybe 30’s. It speaks of what education truly represents—it’s more than just learning some facts and going through the motions of a basic classroom, it’s about character, life-long learning, applying what we learn to our lives, being in community with others, finding ways to make learning fun, to play as we learn and learn as we play, to rediscover the joy and excitement of learning.
Stuart talks about a game called “The Needle’s Eye” in which the school kids chant, “The needle’s eye that does supply, The thread that runs so true, Many a beau, have I let go, Because I wanted you.” I’ll be honest, I wasn’t totally sure what to gain from that. Later, Stuart describes that “the thread that runs so true” at school is “play.” The “needle” is the teacher and he or she provides “the thread that runs so true.” “Play. Play. Play that ran so true among little children. little foxes, little lambs. Yes, play among big children and grownups! …Their work should be play. I should make them think they were playing while they learned to read, while they learned to count! That was it! I had it. Play.”
Granny is the “Needle” of our family and she provided “The Thread That Runs So True.” She is the example, the leader, the rock, the movie-star, the birthplace of so much of what we are. She taught all of us through her ways of playing, of making parts of life into a game, into a play, into a jungle gym, learning by hands-on, teaching by example. Teaching as she cooked, as she dug in her garden, as she treated absolutely everyone on equal ground, as she sang throughout the house, as she talked to herself as she went about her day, as she went to church, as she arm-wrestled her children, as she gave to others, as she got pulled over for a speeding while dressed as Mary Magdalene on the way to Vacation Bible School, when she took others into her household even though she already had six children—welcoming people from other countries, people from church, her children’s friends, her friend’s children, strangers and various animals, including all the snakes her daughter Margie (my Mom) kept as pets.
I think the whole town would have come to visit her had they known she was passing away. I think people from many states and other countries would have come to visit her, to gain last bits of wisdom from the small-sized woman who lived an extra-large life.
Granny hasn’t been able to say anything in the last week. But even without words, an exemplary amount was imparted, by watching those who came to visit—how they were affected by her in the past and present. By seeing an ex-police officer and Marine hold her hand and cry uncontrollably, which I think was a surprise even to himself. When she would stir or try to say anything, the room would go silent and still, and we’d lean over the bed, holding still, staying close, just watching her and listening to whatever she might be trying to say or where she was trying to move or what she was trying to see. She had the floor, she had our attention.
I have a grand amount to say about my grandmother. I want to interview all her children and others close to her. But I haven’t done those things yet. I just want to say something, so I’m posting this now—maybe to work through how I feel about all this. It’s affected me more than I anticipated. People keep saying, “Well, at least she’s 97 and lived a good, long life.” This, indeed, is true, but I don’t think it takes away from the unbounded loss that her passing will be. But she’ll still be with us, of course. A teacher never really leaves the earth. She’s imparted too much on everyone that’s still living, and they, too, will pass that on.
Death has a way of making you think about living. A way that we likely wish we had everyday of our lives. It makes us think about how we’re living and if we’re truly living. What does it even mean to live? What is a life well-lived and are you doing just that? If not, how will you change going forward? What do you need to do to remind yourself to live, live, live? To do the things you know you want to, need to, must do, crave to and can’t fully feel like you’ve lived without doing? Or maybe you don’t need to worry about such things. Maybe you just need to be more present to the people around you and be more present to yourself. Maybe you just need to notice the fabric of your clothes, how it scratches or how sweet and comforting it feels on your skin, how your coffee tastes like the dirt in a flower pot or the most decadent silky beverage you’ve ever partaken.
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Do you ever have one of those moments where life feels like it sincerely slowwwws down? Not when you’re flying around in a car crash kind-of-thing, but just a random moment. When you’re sitting in a coffee shop (like I am right now)… When it doesn’t seem real. When you look around and see a child skipping outside the window, with her Minnie Mouse dress dancing in the wind as she skips gleefully down the sidewalk (this was really happening as I typed), her hand in her mother’s, blonde hair tousling as her tiny body bobbed up and down in the evening air, her hair-bow bouncing right along. And you’re at a table in the cafe in the very back that you strategically chose so you could see everyone but no one could see you (you think that, anyway). You see people eating chips slowly, grabbing, crunching, scrolling on their computers perusing homes for-sale, the yellow-haired college student in a sweatshirt five-sizes-too-big who was just sitting beside you that went to the bathroom meanders through the crooked tables. She seems to be moving so slowly that she’s oozing like goo through the sea bed of people and scuffed scratched furniture. People are laughing, that slow laugh you see in movies, when the camera pans slowly across the faces, heads tossed back, rows of teeth out unabashedly while sentimental and uplifting music plays in the air, no words—just taking in what it means to have true human connection and happiness. And then you see people staring at their computers, looking at their phones, looking at each other and not, avoiding eye contact. Headphones, bluetooth, screens, screens, phone, tablet, phone. You feel melancholy and joy simultaneously.
(I promise I’ll get back to Granny stuff soon. I think death has a way of bringing you to the present.)
Everything feels poetic. The spilled coffee on the napkin, the shape it made, the condensation on the multi-windowpanes with droplets flowing down, making it look like some kind of snowy window evening photo, the sun setting in the background with layers of cozy pastel colors, winter-bare trees partially visible through the pencil-thin pathways of the falling dewy drops down the glass, the naked oak branches slightly moving, a few crumpled leaves dancing as they hold onto the spindly stick arms. These images make you want to sip on a steaming mug of apple cider that your grandmother made. It looks like a window you’d see in a Norman Rockwell print on a calendar that’s four years out of date hanging in your garage in that corner you used to frequent when you did the sort of things that necessitated you venturing into the tool’y, work’y area when you did garage’y things.
This moment was topped off with me cupping my coffee mug, taking a slight sip of the fire’y liquid, setting it down and noticing the lipstick mark, the half-moon swoop of pinky reddish lipstick staring back at me. Today I chose to wear lipstick and be classy like Granny.
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Today, is the day after I wrote the previous bit. It is February 14th. Just another day, eh? Today, things don’t feel so poetic, for no particular reason. I keep sneezing in the coffee shop and want to blow my nose like a freight train sounds, but I’m surrounded by a pool of people. There are two children running allllll around. Oh. my. gracious. I don’t say that in a cute way. Shush, chil’ren. One is a skinny little fella in a skeleton pajama outfit. His pants fell down while he was running. Yes, I know, I know, it’s funny. Especially since he was totally unfazed, BUT I’m trying to concentrate on sounding smart and well-read and cool and poetic!
Okay, it suddenly felt poetic again. In the way that messy times in life feel comical and absurd and lovely. The two little boys thrust open the door to the outside world (Mom staring at her phone. Womp womp, not noticing). Without shoes, they went outside, the skeleton boy acting the most unwaveringly alive and unabashedly himself. It’s freezing out and his bare feet are toe tapping the cold brick as he flies. But the sun is raining it’s warmth on the clay. His smooshed, tangled, shaggy golden hair is dancing ever-so-slightly in the wind as he prances and floats in the Friday morning air.
(Hi. As you can see, I like to write in real time as things unfold in my brain.)
I just had the urge to run outside with my arms strewn out on each side as far as they can go in airplane mode, zooming around this way and that, diagonal wings, back and forth, flying across the pavement. If my pants fell down, I think I’d mind though. And so would everyone else.
Granny would have run out there with them.
Somehow I find it odd that no one else is really noticing this… or trying to notice. The people around me aren’t experiencing what I am. Screen, screen, screen, headphones, headphones, phone, phone screen, phone. Text tweet. Repeat.
The two tykes have returned indoors. One little boy is saying “Byyyye!” to the other while doing this cute little back and forth half circle motion with his miniature left hand. I’m just realizing the parent’s of these lil’ hoodlums don’t know each other, and these boys certainly didn’t know each other before this encounter. Yet they just magically ran around the cafe and outside on the sunshine’d brick road, gliding through the wonky metal jungle gym of chairs and tables creating a world of their own.
This is “The Thread That Runs So True.” This is PLAY.
I suppose if I have gleaned nothing else from this time as my Granny is passing from this Earth to another realm, I’m noticing things just a liiiittle bit more, even if it’s just for a few days. Even if it’s just because I’m not working. I was supposed to be in California this week for vacation, but I canceled the trip at the last second because we were all certain my grandmother would pass almost immediately. It’s been six days now and she’s still with us in some capacity, but it could quite literally be any minute, any second now. Maybe right now as I’m typing this she us taking her last breath. They (the nurses) have been saying this for days. “Any time now.” And it’s true. It has been true the whole time. We don’t understand how she’s pushed on through this. Maybe when you read this, she will have fully passed away from this part of human life on Earth. I’m in the confusing juxtaposition of wanting her never to leave and wanting her to exit the struggle and suffering.
I don’t know how to end this, and I haven’t finished this.
My grandmother almost died when she was five-years-old. She had bacterial meningitis. All her hair fell out, and she was oddly yellow from jaundice and her skin was disturbingly dry and cracked. She was predicted to most certainly die. Her grandfather went outside and kicked fence posts because he thought they’d lost her. Since she would die anyway, they thought, one of the doctors decided to do a double or triple dose of a new and potentially harmful drug.
And she lived.
She was meant to live. Even now, at 97, she’s holding onto life just a litter longer.
She was a teacher, mentor and almost like a mom to all who encountered her. She was Ma Cagle. Mrs. Cagle. Granny Cagle to any and to all.
This is a quote from the book “The Thread That Runs So True” that inspired Granny’s life of teaching. She also quoted this in an essay about herself:
“I thought if every teacher in every school in America--rural, village, city, township, church, public, or private, could inspire his pupils with all the power he had, if he could teach them as they had never been taught before to live, to work, to play, and to share, if he could put ambition into their brains and hearts, that would be a great way to make a generation of the greatest citizenry America ever had.”
Granny was a teacher, and I think we’re all teachers in some capacity. Maybe we just don’t realize it or we don’t see the tiny, seemingly insignificant little things we impart on others every day, every hour, every minute as our lives unfold around other living bodies. What are you imparting on others? Margaret Cagle, my Granny, continues to “put ambition into [my] brain and heart.”