She is not crazy nor a go out on a limb type person, but she is very kind, caring, and sensitive.    Shannon Gaiter was born the daughter of a military man and a simple, but not ordinary, young woman in December 1970.  It was said by her mother that she loved make-believe stories.  Shannon remembers the past as if it was yesterday, when she recalled the passing of her grandmother.   

Every time her grandmother would tell a story about her mother, aunts, and uncles; she was so excited and ask “Where was I granny?”  Then her grandmother would retell the story to include Shannon, and she laugh, and laugh so hard asking, “What did I do next granny?”  Granny continued telling the story. 

            Her grandmother loved her very much and would take her everywhere.  They would travel to Houston Texas, to go see her great aunt Blacky.  Every time someone would call her great aunt Blacky she would say “don’t say that.”  She didn’t understand that it was her aunt’s nickname, even though Blacky’s complexion was as dark as the night sky, when there were no stars in it.   Most of her uncles and aunts complexions were medium brown, including her mother and grandmother.  The only two that had a dark complexion was Shannon and her aunt Rose.  Everyday Shannon would sit out on her grandmother’s front porch and pray to God.  One day her grandmother came out and asked her “What are you praying about?”  Shannon said, “I am praying to God and asking him why he burned me and my aunt Rose, because he took everyone else out of the oven and left us in too long.”  Her grandmother stood there with a smile on her face and said, “God knows best, he did not burn you sweetheart he only made you better.”  She began to explain how different skin tones can endure different types of weather as well as, age in a different way.   

She loved her grandmother very much, because she could ask her anything and her grandmother had the answer.  Then the phone ring and as her granny picked it up a voice on the other end said, “Your brother have just died.”  The look on her granny’s face was as pale as a ghost.  She had no expression, just a deep star into space.  This last for about 30 seconds and then her granny sit down and said, “Come her Shannon and sit on my lap.”  Her grandmother held her tight and sang a gospel song called “Oh When I Come to The End of My Journey.”  Shannon looked up at her grandmother as she sang, but her granny never shed a tear.  A week later they went to the funeral, it was the first funeral that Shannon had ever seen.  Everything went fine at the church, until they arrived at the grave site.  Everyone gathered around the casket; as if it was a barrel of fire sitting on a street corner, looking down to warm their hands from the cold winter wind.   The Reverend delivered his prayer and then he said “ashes to ashes dust to dust, Shannon was very little and could not see so she stood on a chair and watched as they began to lower the casket down into the ground, Shannon yelled out with a loud cry almost like the sound of a Bald Eagle when soaring across the sky, “Don’t put him in the ground, because if you do, he want be able to breathe!”  Then her grandmother started to cry. 

It was a wiry and still day in March 1995; Shannon was 24, when she received the same phone call that her granny received when Shannon was little.  She was over five hundred miles away, when her mother called and said, “Your grandmother has passed away.”  She screamed as though someone had cut her heart out and was stuffing it down her throat!  There were so many knots in her throat, and the pressure would not let up.  She felt like someone was choking her, while poring hot liquid in her eyes as it ran down her face to the floor. 

She thought was this the moment missed.  Is this the moment when your body goes numb, because you were not there at her side to comfort her?  Was granny body numb during her moment missed, because she was not there when her brother died?  Or is this just the moment when she said “God knows best.”