The racial doctrine in Lillian’s community was “separate, but not equal.” The men in her life pondered a cruel theological mystery in 1937 when Joe Louis became Heavyweight Champion of the world. How could God allow such a thing to happen? Black people were considered unworthy and inconsequential. There was a ‘place’ for blacks, and they were barely tolerable as long as they knew their place and stayed there.

Books taught her to have nothing but contempt for bigotry. She reveled in this knowledge as Joe Louis subsequently scrambled the brains of every white challenger with the greatest of ease. He hardly even broke a sweat. This was certainly a profound shock to the men she grew up with.

Lillian never had much time for religion, either. She felt that if God could make people so poor and unhappy then He must be terribly hateful, and therefore she had no use for Him. She figured that God was a lot less interested in her fate than most people thought, and not to be entirely trusted.

In her neighborhood, she learned the true meaning of the word ‘hypocrisy.’ She assumed that people went to church in order to improve their character and follow the gospel of brotherly love. But after all the singing and praying on Sundays, it was disgraceful examples of intolerance and racism that Lillian witnessed during the rest of the week.

Her brother Butch was born eight days after the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The celebration in Washington, DC had cost ten million dollars at a time when people were starving, begging on the streets, sleeping without shelter and committing suicide in record numbers. Everyone thought that Roosevelt’s predecessor, the cherubic-looking Herbert Hoover, had ruined the country. The economy seemed beyond repair. People’s hopes and dreams had been destroyed by the Great Depression.

Instead of becoming hardened to the world by her childhood experiences, Lillian became sympathetic to life’s losers. She had worked steadily from the age of 17, moving from job to job, always bettering her income. She was confident that she could cope with whatever lay ahead. All of the hard times seemed to be behind her.

Men pursued her, wooed her and loved her, but only a small part of her loved them back. She was not a woman who could trust any man completely. Men clouded her judgment and gave her false enthusiasm. She longed for love, concern, devotion, stability, and a private family life. Lillian was hungry for laughter in those days.

Eventually, she fell in love and married a dashing young musician named Bill Bailey. Bill was a charismatic, freewheeling, easy-going playboy with wavy blond hair. For all I know, the popular song “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey?” was written about him. He certainly got around. Bill was an itinerant jazz drummer, and according to Lillian, he had five pastimes: he slept; enjoyed sex wherever and whenever available; played music; smoked like a train, and drank gallons of black coffee.

Bill Bailey also had dapper manners. He polished his shoes at night and inspected his suits for wrinkles and stains, which he removed with the help of a little benzene and a white cloth that he pressed onto the ironing board. The other men Lillian knew considered this to be “sissified” behavior.

She ran away to marry Bill in August of 1939, as the German army was amassing on the border of Poland. World War II was about to begin. Soon the Nazis controlled most of the European continent, and her ‘golden boy,’ Bill Junior was born. Lillian was pregnant with my mother, Karen Sue, when Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. The United States had been at war for nearly eight months by the time she was born in August, 1942.

The Baileys had a tempestuous relationship, to say the least. Bill eventually grew tired of domestic life and left his young family to live with another woman who he’d gotten pregnant. Lillian was suddenly left alone with two small children to raise, at the age of 21. She was absolutely unqualified to play the role of two parents; hell, she barely considered herself qualified to be one parent!

She used to read to the children in bed at night, but none of the stories were about single women raising kids on their own. She resigned herself to the fact that married people who have chosen each other over all others often find that after a few years they grow to hate each other’s guts. Bill Bailey was determined to break Lillian’s spirit, and she was just as determined not to let that happen.

Mothers sometimes hate their own children. Lillian felt that many mothers should have aborted their offspring and spared everyone the agony of a life filled with regrets. Children who are forced on a woman can be a burden. When someone is made to take responsibility for another person’s welfare, it can be hard to show respect.

Somehow, despite all the turmoil, Lillian met a man from West Virginia named Harold W. Stout. Harold became her second husband, and he legally adopted her two children – but they were only married for about nine months before he high-tailed it back home to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Eventually, Lillian made the tough decision to move to Chicago in search of more a more stable life, and she left the kids in the care of her mother at home in Indianapolis. Once she had established herself in Chi-town, she returned and brought Bill Jr. and my mom with her back to Chicago. Bill Jr. never forgave Lillian for uprooting his life and taking him away from all of his friends in Indiana. Their relationship continued to deteriorate over the years.

Lillian thrived in the metropolitan surroundings of the big city. She worked her way up the social ladder, gaining more status as the years rolled by. She lived with a variety of men, mostly black men. She spoke fondly of those days hanging out and dancing all night at some of the Windy City’s most famous integrated nightclubs, but she eventually became restless and decided to move on. Lillian always said there are two kinds of women: those who stay and fight and those who run away. She was a runner.

By the time I became aware and really got to know my grandmother, I was a little boy and my family was living in Los Angeles. The 1960’s were in full swing. Lillian had followed my mom and dad to the west coast looking for a better life. Times were indeed changing, and women began to take more responsibility for themselves. Even though Women’s Lib was several years away, the Civil Rights movement was still blossoming and revolution was in the air. Lillian was in the midst of a volatile, long term relationship with another black man by the name of William Murray.

For a long time I assumed they were married, but actually they just lived together on and off throughout the late sixties and early seventies. For more than a decade, they shared a home and a love of horse racing. The two of them subsequently gambled away many thousands of dollars at Santa Anita in pursuit of their mutual passion. Thus Lillian began a lifelong obsession with gambling.

After one last falling out with Murray, Lillian relocated her mother, Violet Perry, to California to be with her. The two of them spent many tense years living together under the same roof. She worked all day making home visits as a social worker for the state of California, driving like a maniac through the forbidding Mojave Desert in her Ford Grenada.

Growing up in the cold Midwest had given Lillian a deep appreciation for the remote beauty and scorching heat of the vast, unforgiving desert.

Lillian worked even harder during this time, and at the age of 65 she finally achieved her lifelong goal and received a college degree from Mount San Jacinto Community College in the remote, God-forsaken desert town of Hemet, California. She made the Dean’s list with a 3.6 grade-point average. Lillian had finally triumphed. I was there as she walked proudly down the aisle to receive her diploma.

While working at the Welfare Department, Lillian met and married a guy named Tom Soncrant, and took his name. Tom was an imbecile and a wife-beater, and the only thing I remember about him is the fact that his idiot son once took a shit in our swimming pool. Lillian divorced Tom as soon as he started hitting her.

After she retired from San Bernardino County Lillian realized that a person no longer has the same intense passions, dizzy joys or careless raptures as they do in their youth. She was quite glad to be free of the increasing demands made upon her. She found that she didn’t have time for meaningless conversations or boring social events. She still read voraciously, though.

Following my mom’s painful divorce from my dad, Lillian, my mother, and my great-grandmother pooled their resources together and pursued their mutual dream of living in Las Vegas. My mom worked in the casinos and Lillian gambled the night away.

Lillian found growing old a liberating process. She wanted to begin a whole new life at a time when other women found themselves in a pattern where life was supposed to end. She didn’t mind becoming invisible to men’s stares and less dependent on their esteem. She turned gray and put on some weight, but she didn’t mind at all. “I was slim when I was young and it counted,” she once told me.

In the years that followed, Lillian managed to squander away most of her retirement on video poker and slot machines. Sometimes she won a lot of money, only to lose it all back again over the course of the following week.

Eventually, Lillian’s mother Violet began suffering from senile dementia, and sadly, she soon died.

**

Lillian promised herself that when she was old and gray she would have no regrets in life. This was especially true when it came to romance, she claimed, even though she was often the loser in the ‘love games,’ as she put it. She remained an eternal optimist as far as human relationships are concerned. At least that’s what she said.

Over time, I came to understand that my grandmother remained embittered about her relationship with Bill Bailey for the rest of her life. I believe she was still pining away for him until the day he died. Bill suffered from the complications of too many years of hard living and alcohol abuse. I met Bill briefly when he came to town for Lillian’s graduation a few months before his heart finally gave out. He came to visit Lillian and make amends for all the pain he’d caused her over the years.

He was a sickly, frail old man when I met him, but he was still quite charming and he absolutely oozed charisma – even in that diminished state. He reminded me of an aged Errol Flynn. Bill Bailey gave me a practice pad and a pair of drumsticks. I have him to thank for my musical awakening as a teenager. For that, I am eternally grateful.

After my mom finally moved out of the house they shared in Vegas, Lillian fell and broke her hip. Not long after that, she broke the other one. She was never the same after all of the agonizing surgeries. Lillian tried to continue living on her own, but she was miserable.

Eventually, cousin Lauri stepped in and moved Lillian from Nevada to be closer to her family in Illinois. She set her up in a small apartment directly across the street from the massive public library in Arlington Heights. That is where my wife Valerie and I enjoyed many hours visiting with Lillian, playing Scrabble long into the night. I saw another side of the bossy, domineering woman that I was so afraid of as a child. I began to appreciate her for who she was. Even though she was in a lot of pain, she never lost her cynical sense of humor. We shared many good times together.

**

Like the song says, however, All Things Must Pass. Lillian’s physical needs became too much for Lauri and Dave to handle by themselves, and my mom ultimately had to move in with her to take care of her 24 hours a day. She sacrificed almost two years of her life until she was unable to continue any longer as her mother’s caretaker. Lillian’s condition became more untenable, and she eventually had to move into an assisted living home. Lillian’s body was giving out, but her brain remained incredibly sharp. She totally understood the situation, and after another unbearable year of being confined to a wheelchair, she decided to leave this world on her own terms. She requested that the nurses let her die. She was tired of being such a burden to everyone.

“I love you, grandmother,” I told her the last time we spoke. “I know you do, sweetheart,” she replied. That meant a lot.

Valerie and I left the next morning to fly back home to Albuquerque.

A few weeks later we got the call that Lillian had fallen into a coma. This was expected, but I still wanted to see her one more time. I came alone and spent the day just sitting beside her, holding her hand. Her nails were black and her skin was nearly translucent.

**

We watched Lillian’s ashes float down Sugar Creek. As her cremains gently faded away downstream, some canoers paddled right through them. It occurred to me that I could’ve dived into the water myself and taken a swim in grandmother. I don’t think she would have minded one bit.

A few months later, I informed my wife I’d had a vision. I had seen grandmother in a dream, I told her – but I don’t know if that’s really true. Whatever the case, it suddenly dawned on me that it might’ve seemed strange that I only ever referred to her as ‘grandmother’ during her lifetime: not ‘grandma Ann,’ ‘Mimi,’ ‘Nana’ or any of those affectionate nicknames other people called her. I always just called her ‘grandmother.’ “Hello, grandmother,” I would say. “I love you, grandmother.”

In my vision, I asked her to forgive me, and we laughed about it.