Never Empty Nest: Grandmother arrives in nick of time

CNHI News Service

DECATUR, Ga. August 24, 2006 11:12 am

— Virginia Mitchell, home from a morning of dialysis, is in high spirits.
“Thank God, right now I feel pretty good,” she said. “I go to dialysis three times a week and I had a stroke in 1996. I don’t walk that good, but I’m OK.”
Her small rented home in Decatur, part of metropolitan Atlanta, is flush with family, except for her daughter, who Mitchell said is an alcoholic. The 74-year-old Mitchell hasn’t known the daughter’s whereabouts for a year even though she used to live nearby.
“She didn’t pay the rent and she got evicted,” Mitchell said, leaving behind a 16-year-old son, who made a tearful call to his grandmother.
“Their stuff had been set outside. My daughter-in-law was here so we went and got him,” Mitchell said. “Somebody had called DFCS (Department of Family and Children Services) and they were on their way to get him but I beat them to him.”
Mitchell’s household now includes two grandsons, both children of her missing daughter. She said her husband died eight years ago and her income is mostly from her monthly Social Security check.
“We eat, we got a roof over our heads and we got utilities,” she said.
Mitchell hopes her grandson Christian, now 17, will be the first in the family to attend college. But he will need financial assistance in the form of loans and scholarships.
“He wants to go to college,” she said. “By the time I do what I need to do, I don’t have that much.”

CNHI News Service