Rest in Heaven, Momie

This season doesn’t feel like the holidays to me.

Every year around December, something shifts inside me. The world speeds up—lights go up, music plays, people celebrate—but for me, this time slows everything down. It carries a weight I’ve never been able to shake, and I’ve learned to stop pretending otherwise.

December reminds me of loss.

My grandmother passed away on December 20, 2007, and ever since then, this season has carried her absence. No amount of holiday cheer has ever been strong enough to cover that truth.

My grandmother, Nellie Belle Bramlett, pictured here with her first child, Willie Paul Bramlett Jr., in Morris Court housing community in Pensacola, Florida, circa 1957. Born in Evergreen, Alabama, Nellie Belle carried Southern roots, resilience, and motherhood across state lines—from Alabama to Ohio to Florida. This quiet moment captures a young Black mother anchoring her son in love during the Jim Crow era, inside a public housing community that shaped generations of African American family life in Pensacola.

I remember the day before she died. She had just come out of surgery and was extremely weak. My sister was with her in the hospital and called me. A moment later, I heard my grandmother’s shaky voice say, “I love you.”

I told her I loved her too. I told her to get well. I told her I’d see her soon.

Then I asked my sister to take the phone away from her ear so she could rest.

If I had known that would be the last time I ever heard her voice, I never would have said that.

That moment remains the only true regret of my life. I don’t regret relationships, choices, or even painful chapters. But I regret not holding on longer to that call—because later that night, everything changed.

When I fell asleep, I dreamed of my great-grandfather walking into a hospital room where my grandmother lay. He told her, “It’s time to come home, Nellie.” The next day, before anyone could say the words, I already knew. She was gone.

Grief has a way of revealing truths we didn’t fully understand while someone was still alive.

My relationship with my grandmother wasn’t easy when I was growing up. We clashed. She was stern, demanding, and unapologetically strict—especially with me. Schoolwork came before everything. Books before friends. Discipline before softness.

At the time, I believed she didn’t like me.

But adulthood gave me clarity childhood couldn’t.

Years later, I came across a newspaper article from the 1950s listing my grandmother as having been arrested alongside a friend. The following day, a correction was printed—she had been released and cleared, while her friend remained behind bars. Reading that changed how I saw everything.

I realized her strictness wasn’t cruelty—it was protection.

She wasn’t trying to limit me; she was trying to keep me free.

When I moved to Georgia in 1998, our relationship softened. From age 19 until I was 28, I got to know her as a woman, not just an authority figure. I saw her independence, her boundaries, her refusal to live life on anyone else’s terms. I finally understood her choices, her solitude, and her strength.

She survived three different cancers before finally passing from one I didn’t even know existed. Even then, she held onto her dignity. When I would travel back and forth to Pensacola to take her to treatments, she’d ask to drive my car—just around the neighborhood—because she still wanted to feel like herself.

I let her.

I was pregnant when she died. I made the drive too late. At the funeral home, I didn’t cry. I talked to her like she was asleep. I came back day after day, speaking to her until the day of the funeral.

The tears didn’t come until they closed the casket.

That was the moment it became final.

No more phone calls.

No more visits.

No more hearing her voice tell me to straighten up and not act a fool.

Even now, I still hear her when life tests my composure.

This post isn’t about a perfect grandmother. It’s about truth, legacy, and the complicated love that shapes us. My grandmother—and my great-grandmother alongside her—taught me how to survive, how to stand alone, and how to protect my peace.

They raised me.

They shielded me.

They shaped me.

So today, I honor Nellie Belle Bramlett—the matriarch of my village. There is no way to repay what she gave me except to live in a way that reflects her strength.

Happy 18th heavenly birthday, Momie.

Continue resting in power. 💕