“I have an adventurous palate. I had to go to the emergency room once to have my stomach pumped.”
— Precious, 1-year-old, who is part Chihuahua, Schnauzer and something else

The puppy was a gift for a granddaughter, but lives with the grandmother.

The post When it comes to eating, she’s not picky appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I’m a volunteer court-appointed special advocate for children who are in the foster care system. Their case worker may change. Their attorney may change. But unless they move to Austin or some place like that, I will continue to be the one face that never changes.

“I get to spend time with them. I get to know them. They get to feel safe with me. And they feel loved. In the spectrum of all the court processes that are involved in their case, it means a lot to those little kids to have somebody there who is really fighting for them and can speak for them. 

“When I go over there, it’s like visiting my grandkids, and we have a good time. I just love kids. If I could have had 12 of my own, I would have. But I only had two. That’s all God wanted for me. I do have four grandkids and one on the way.

“I just have so much love to give. And I have free time. So why would I want to bottle that up in my house? I want to share it with these kids, and I want to help them. They go through some horrible, horrible things in their lives. I just want them to know that there’s somebody who is always there for them. I think I can do that.”

— Stella Furst

Stella volunteers with CASA of Liberty and Chambers County. Additional advocates are needed.

Related:

• ‘There are enough good days, I can still enjoy life’

The post Foster care advocate has ‘so much love to give’ appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“My grandmother is the epitome of a nana. She always feeds you. She always listens to you. She’s always there for you. She always wants the best for you. Now, for her and my grandfather to do this garage sale to help with my wedding, it’s just amazing.

“We’ve been really fortunate. The venue we wanted had a sale conveniently going on when we were looking, so we got a low price. The wedding dress I found went on sale the next day, so it was really cheap. I don’t know how, but everything is coming together. And it’s amazing to see how much family, friends and just life in general are kind of saying, here you go.

“I used to think about what it would be like to get married. But after my parents divorced when I was 16, I didn’t know if it would ever happen for me. I always hoped for it. But when you grow up with two great parents, then all of a sudden it kind of crumbles, you wonder if there’s such a thing out there for you. But with my grandparents, I always saw it. I still see it. So I know it’s there. They’ve been married almost 50 years. Now it’s kind of cool to have my own moment, where I know it’s real. We’re going to make it happen.”

— Kaitlyn McDonald

The post With extra help from grandparents, wedding on track appeared first on The Baytown Project.

I

Cancer wasn’t a stranger to the family. In 1991, at age 74, Suzanne’s father was diagnosed with small-cell carcinoma. In a matter of months, the aggressive form of lung cancer had spread and taken his life.

So when Suzanne was diagnosed in 2017 with the same type of cancer and at the same age as her father, the family knew her time was limited.

The brain lesions affected her the most. She had constant nausea and had become so unsteady that she had trouble writing.

“Around Nov. 1, I got a call from my mom. She told me I needed to come out to see grandma. I knew what that meant,” Rebecca said.

Before boarding the plane from Houston, Rebecca received another call from her mom. It was bad news. The cancer had spread to multiple organs, and surgery was no longer an option.

“On the flight over I prepared myself, knowing that this would probably be the last time I was going to be able to see my grandma before she passed,” Rebecca said.

And she was right. But in no way was she prepared for what would actually happen.

‘A bad day’

Rebecca was surprised to see her grandma still awake when she arrived at her home late on Nov. 7.

“Right away I could tell she was not well. She always had this presence when she walked into a room like, I’m in charge and I know it. But the woman I saw was frail and tiny,” Rebecca said.

Extreme nausea kept Suzanne from getting any sleep that night, and the next day wasn’t much better. 

“I tried to spark up some kind of conversation with her, but she really wasn’t having it. Mostly, we just sat in silence,” Rebecca recalled.

Later in the day Rebecca’s mother left the house to pick up her son from school, and her grandfather went to a meeting.

Rebecca had made plans to grab dinner with a friend that evening. So she went upstairs to ask her grandma if she could use her car.

“She said, ‘Of course. My car is yours while you’re in town.’”

But that was the extent of their conversation. 

“I could tell she didn’t want me in her room. So I said that I was going to leave once grandpa got home,” Rebecca said. “I told her that if she needed anything, she could text me and I would come home. That last part made her angry. I could see it in her face.

“She looked straight ahead, avoiding my eyes, and said, ‘Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you.’”

Holding back tears — Suzanne had this rule that when it came to her diagnosis, family was not allowed to cry in front of her — Rebecca ran from the room and went downstairs, where she called her twin sister.

“I cried to her on the phone. I didn’t understand why grandma couldn’t just let me help her. I loved her, and I just wanted to help,” Rebecca said. “I spent the next 45 minutes feeling sorry for myself because my grandma was ‘mean’ to me.”

Just after 5 p.m., Rebecca was washing dishes when her grandpa came home and started helping her with the drying.

“He asked how she was doing, and I told him what she had said to me,” Rebecca said. “He gave me a hug and said, ‘She has good days and bad days. Today just happens to be a bad day.’”

Less than a minute later, they heard the shot.

Worst fear realized

After a frantic search of the house, Rebecca’s grandma was nowhere to be found. 

“Grandpa thought maybe what we heard was the front door slamming. Maybe she went to her friend’s house down the street, and we just didn’t see her go out the door,” Rebecca said.

When he returned from the neighbor’s home, Rebecca asked him to check upstairs again while she searched further downstairs.

“I found nothing, and returned to the front door. As I did, grandpa yelled, ‘Rebecca, call 911!’”

He had discovered his wife in the master bathroom.

“When I got there, I saw him kneeling by the bathtub. He was rubbing my grandma’s back, saying her name and trying to get her to respond,” Rebecca said.

It was too late. Suzanne had shot herself in the head. The gun was beside her in the tub.

Remembering grandma

Instead of a funeral, the family decided to hold a celebration of life.

“Grandma had started saying, ‘I’ve been to way too many funerals lately.’ So my mom knew she wouldn’t have wanted everybody to gather around and mourn her,” Rebecca said. “Instead, we had a margarita punch bowl and just a little celebration of life.”

Dealing with the suicide has been quite challenging for Rebecca. But she realizes why her grandmother did it.

“It wasn’t that she was battling depression her entire life or anything like that. She had watched her dad die, and that was very painful for her. So in the end, she didn’t want that for the rest of us. She couldn’t live the life that she wanted. Her body wouldn’t allow her to. So she figured at that point, there’s nothing else for me here. All I’m going to do is cause everybody else, including myself, more pain if I stay.”

There was no suicide note, but her grandmother did leave a message of sorts. She had always worn a necklace that Rebecca’s mom had given to her. It featured the name Suzanne, which also is the name of Rebecca’s mom.

“She never took it off. But afterwards, when my mom was going through her things in her room, she discovered that grandma had placed it right there on the bedside,” Rebecca said. “I guess that was her note to us. She was sort of passing the torch.”

Reminders

To help keep her grandmother’s memory close — and to ward off that haunting vision of her in the bathtub — Rebecca got a tattoo on the inside of her right arm showing a hummingbird in flight with pink wings. Underneath the image are the words, “Your wings were ready. My heart was not.”

“My grandma had a huge window in the front of her house, and she hung a hummingbird feeder there. She had a couch right under the window, and she would just sit and watch them come and feed,” Rebecca said. “Her favorite color was pink, so that’s why I chose pink for the wings.”

Dealing with the memory of the suicide is a daily challenge for Rebecca. She joined several online suicide support groups to help her cope, and to help others who have experienced similar tragedies.

“Especially with younger people who have lost someone to suicide, they feel like they have no one to reach out to. In some cases, they end up taking their own lives,” Rebecca said. “One of the major things I’m aiming toward is that there’s no further loss of life after somebody commits suicide.”

Rebecca also started a blog, The Real Aftermath of Suicide. It’s a place where she is very open about her experiences and feelings related to her grandmother’s death.

“I realized early on that if I didn’t talk about it, if I didn’t find some kind of release like writing — even if nobody reads it — that this was just going to get worse as time went on. It’s allowed me to keep it manageable,” Rebecca said.

“This is something I’m going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. The tattoo helps, but I’ll never be able to get that image out of my head of seeing my grandma in the bathtub. With time, it’s going to become a little bit easier. But I’ll still have those days where it hits me like a brick wall. That’s when you just have to go throw plates against a wall or something.”

AUDIO EXTRA: Rebecca Crenshaw is open, honest about grandmother’s suicide

The post Her final visit with grandmother turns tragic appeared first on The Baytown Project.

Related:

• Her final visit with grandmother turns tragic

The post Dealing with suicide in an open, honest way appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“When I was 20 years old, I learned that my mom wasn’t really my mom, my dad wasn’t really my dad, and my siblings weren’t really my siblings.

“My mother got pregnant with me at a very young age. They sent her to Louisiana to give birth and then immediately brought me back. My biological grandmother raised me as her daughter. For 20 years, I thought she was my mother. And my biological mother was raised as my sister. She was there my whole life, but I just thought she was my sister.

“I found out the truth when my grandmother came over one day, sat me down and told me. She had a very wicked sense of humor, so I just figured she was messing with me. But she was like, ‘No. I’m serious.’

“I went through the whole grieving process. There was a lot of anger, denial and resentment. For the longest time, I struggled with it. Ultimately, I was able to come to grips with it. I told myself that this obviously is the path God has chosen for me. There’s a purpose behind this story. I’m meant to do something important. I’m meant to touch the lives of others in some way.

“Before my grandmother passed about five years ago, we all had come to terms with it. I don’t carry any animosity toward my biological mother or my grandmother. It’s definitely a tale with many twists and turns. But I feel like this whole experience has made me that much stronger. I’ve accepted it and I’ve used it to help make a positive impact on others.”

— Victoria Marron

Related:

• She positively influences lives of young people
• Education proves to be ‘my ticket out’

The post ‘I learned that my mom wasn’t really my mom’ appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“My grandmother, who is 85, walked everywhere in Baytown. People would comment on how strong a woman she is for walking all the way from Texas Avenue to Walmart and back. Even though she knows how to drive and has a vehicle, she enjoyed every sidewalk here. She did it because she loved to stay active. She had more energy than most 20-year-olds.

“She’s going through a tough time right now. She had a stroke recently and has been fighting for her life. She’s in hospice care, so we’re just trying to comfort her in her last days.”

What’s one piece of advice she gave you?
“Don’t ever care what people think of you. As long as what you’re doing makes you happy, DO IT!”

Did she follow her own advice?
“Oh, yes. She was happy no matter what the situation, good or bad. She could always find the positive in everything.”

— Ninfa Castro, on her grandmother, Maria Garcia Muñoz

The post Avid walker known for her positive attitude appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I’d like to find a job that I’m actually interested in and can make good money at it. I’ve had a bunch of jobs, but they weren’t my calling. Right now I work with my neighbor delivering phone books. In January I’m planning to move to California. I hope to do some modeling.”

Do you have any dreams beyond that?
“I’d really like to do something that helps people, probably because of my grandmother. She’s just really cool and cares about everybody. Growing up and seeing that, it makes you feel like you want to be like that, too. Giving to others, I think that’s my real purpose in life. But I have to get some money first, because people need money.”

— Jacobi Winters-Harrison

The post Grandmother inspires him to help other people appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“These are my granddaughters. The oldest one was born in the Virgin Islands and has been here about a year. She likes it, but one of the biggest changes is the weather. She’s not used to all the air conditioning because you don’t need it down there with the nice breezes. Now she gets asthma all the time because of it.

“Also, school here is much different for her than back home, with the level of schooling and what they’re taught. The teachers understand her even with her accent, but she has a hard time understanding them. She gets frustrated, but she’s doing the best that she can.”

The post Virgin Islands girl getting used to a few changes appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“When I lost my grandma a few years ago, I was pretty sad. I was pretty close to her. I have a picture of her that I keep with me now. It’s like she’s still there. It helps me remember her.”

— Andreas Melendez

The post Photo helps keep his grandmother close appeared first on The Baytown Project.