Never Empty Nest: Grandparent copes with drugs, death

ATLANTA, Ga. —

Emma Jean Davis, 66, chooses her words carefully, her voice a compelling mixture of Southern femininity and authority when she speaks about her daughter.

“I had been looking for her for two years,” she said. “She was missing.”

And Davis was suddenly in charge of raising her daughter’s daughter.

Davis’ search ended in 2000 when her daughter’s remains were identified through DNA evidence. She doesn’t know for sure what caused the death but she suspects drug addiction contributed.

“You either get cured, you go to jail or you die,” said Davis.

Once she became a parent again, Davis said, she retired on a reduced pension from her job as political director for the AFL-CIO labor union so she could care for her granddaughter Emily, who was 6 at the time of her mother’s death.

“I had five more years until full retirement,” she said. “But things were getting crazy.”

Davis said she and her granddaughter received counseling to help them cope with their grief and the changes in their lives.

“This was never my vision, to be raising a child again,” she said. “A 24-7 job is what this is.”

She said while she accepted the responsibility willingly, her life is now more unpredictable.

“I’m scared to death,” she said with a short laugh. “I just take it one day at a time.”

But Davis can predict one aspect of her granddaughter’s future.

“Everybody in this family goes to college,” she said. “There’s no option.”

Davis uses her college education, union background and speaking skills to lobby for greater rights and support programs for grandparents raising their grandchildren.

For example, she said, in Georgia a foster child is given financial assistance to attend college while children raised by grandparents are not. She said they should receive similar benefits.