My grandmother, Sara Maude Fisher, died in a nursing home today.  I always felt guilty that we didn’t keep her at home.  We tried, but she was crazy as they come, and would run off in the middle of the night.  She needed someone to watch her constantly.

 

My dad really tried to keep her out of a home.  He ran a furniture sales business out of the Oldsmar Flea Market and employed her to help.  She lost more money than they made each week, by giving wrong change and forgetting to charge people at all, but for as long as he could make her feel useful and keep her out of danger, he did.

 

My father visited her every week until she died and I felt bad for him because she would rant and rave about how he never visited her, whereas her baby, Terry always did.  She was wrong.  Her other children didn’t visit her much if at all.

 

Dad said she would frequently pull out a magazine and who ever the cover model was that month, she would proudly proclaim to anyone who would listen that it was me.  She would tell them how rich and famous I was and just seemed to revel in it.

 

She had potential to be rich and famous.  She was a young, beautiful and talented French opera singer but she gave up her career to marry a poor, hard working German and raise four children in the 1940s.