Ruby's Birthday 2014

Good Morning World.

It's a Sunday Morning, and as usual I don't have much time to write.  
I am leaving for church in a few minutes. 

I will have to get used to this sort of Blogging, public blogging.  Usually, I write on "750words.com."  That website is private, for my own viewing and therefore I am used to writing without restraint.  I would suggest that website to anyone who has a surplus of thoughts they need to relieve their minds from.  

I believe there is an actual tie between the brain, emotions and the act of writing.  I read once that the act of using a pen or pencil and writing in long hand, aka cursive is even better.  

It's sad to me to finally have lived long enough to see things go by the wayside, such as cursive.  It makes me wonder what my grandmother saw go by the wayside.  

Today is her birthday, she would have been 97.  She died before her birthday in 2006.  I remember the last time I was with her, she was an in-patient at a rehab center here in Las Vegas.  Rehab centers are never a good place to stay, they are a step down from hospitals..a pretty big step down.  

It was Super bowl Sunday evening and I was at her bedside.  She was incoherent for the most part, and her breathing was labored.  A small and I mean small TV, like 7 inch screen was mounted with a long arm on the wall next to her bed.  I held her hand and prayed and sang while watching football.  She labored her breath in her bed, "asleep".  

I wasn't actually present when she died, but she was the first person whom I was close to that had passed away in my life.  Her role in our family was huge.  She was a pioneer, not in the literal sense but in creating new paths for our family.  

She was a first generation Christian and had influenced much of my family for Christianity.  She was also an oil artist, so creative.  She was doing things in her era that most women didn't do.  She finished high school early, finished college.  She even went on a trip to Europe with a group of artists, leaving her husband and teenage children at home.  It was the early '60's at that time.  She's even in the "who's who" of artists.  She also has a painting hanging in the Australian U.S. embassy.  

What a woman!  The thing I remember the most about my Granny, Ruby Jewel Newsom was her prayers.  That woman could pray, she also had the gift of healing.  She would pray for a person who was sick and they would be healed.  She prayed for my sisters warts on her feet and they were healed.  We would joke about Granny getting "revved-up" or "revving her engine" when she prayed..because as soon as one of us would state a request in front of her ...she immediately started to pray in the spirit.  It was hilarious and we all loved it.  Ever since then we all refer to it as the "Granny Revv".  Funny now that I look at that typed out...she was a Reverend.  I remember seeing an identification card that said "Reverend Ruby Newsom".  She was an ordained minister as well.

If I could be half the things she was, or have half the faith or will that she had.  I am part of her legacy and I am so so very wealthy because of it.  I have so much gratitude for this.  We never choose to whom we are born to, but like my Granny she chose to pave a new path for her descendants, regardless of where she came from, regardless of the lack she was dealt in her life and I'm so so very thankful she had the heart and courage to do so.