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KK: This season, we’re hearing all about the different kinds of helpers around us. And for this episode, we’re going to hear stories about two really significant ones: the ones who help bring us into the world, and the ones who help usher us out.

It’s the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR. I’m Kamilah Kashanie.

Our first story comes from 90-year-old Mary Othella Burnette. She wanted to remember her grandmother, Mary Stepp Burnette Hayden, who was an herbalist and midwife from Southern Appalachia. Mary spoke with her daughter, Debora Palmer.

Debora Palmer (DP): What was your relationship with her like, Mom? 

Mary Burnette (MB): She delivered me. She used to tell me how I startled her and my dad a few minutes after I was born by opening my eyes and turning my head to look around the room. And she said, ‘God, look at that.’ My grandmother loved to talk and most of her stories were bad [Laughs]. But Granny’s stories were real life stories. She didn’t know anything about Hansel and Gretel.

DB: Can you paint a picture of Grandma Mary Hayden?

MB: She had deep set eyes, and a fierce look, as if she were looking right through you. She probably weighed not more than 110 pounds. She was about four feet, 11 inches tall, but she could chop her own wood when she was 90 years old, and she could thread a needle without using glasses.

DP: And how did she dress?

MB: She usually wore a dark colored dress of some kind and always had a large white homemade apron. She had very long hair. Very straight and it hung well below her waist. She would ask me to comb her hair and I would have to keep backing up because it was  so long. She liked her hair pulled back tight and she would ball it at the back of her neck. But on one particular occasion, she probably hastily pinned up a braid and she had gone blackberry picking and this black rope fell down across her shoulder and she thought: ‘Oh, my. I’m being attacked by a snake’. And she’s telling that story, and she claps her hands and she says, ‘Gentlemen, it was just a plait of my hair.’ 

MB: That’s one of her good stories.

DP: [Chuckles]

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KK: Mary Stepp Burnette Hayden, or Granny Hayden as her family calls her, was born into slavery in Black Mountain, North Carolina. And her mother was the plantation midwife.

MB: The only memory she ever shared with me about her life on the plantation was listening to the Emancipation Proclamation being read by a man seated on a horse in front of her mother’s cabin. And she always referred to the Emancipation Proclamation as ‘that paper’. She wasn’t excited about it, because it didn’t mean anything to the people in Black Mountain. There was no union officer at the Stepp plantation to enforce it. So they had to stay there another two years until the Civil War ended.

KK: Granny Hayden was seven when she left the plantation, in 1865. She learned herbalism and midwifery from her mother, and eventually started practicing it herself.

MB: Here was this woman, a former slave, walking around delivering babies, and helping people.You have to understand that back when Granny started, there were no hospitals for Black people to go to, and poor people had no money to pay for professional medical care. So if you had a disease that could not be treated by a midwife, you died at home. 

Black Mountain is woods land and houses could be several miles apart, and bears commonly roved the neighborhoods. But she walked. If somebody needed help — Granny was going. Black and whites alike, it made no difference to her. 

DP: Can you tell me the story about the mountain lion? 

MB: Well, we didn’t say mountain lion, it’s the same thing, but we said catamount; cat of the mountain. And they were common in those days. She would be coming home at night. And people had no money, so sometimes they paid her what they called ‘in-kind,’ like a big slab of pork. And that would be her pay. So this catamount would pick up that scent and start to stalk her. But Granny was fearless. She would do what she had to do. 

KK: And here’s what she did. First of all, she wore lots of layers of clothing. She had a bunch of petticoats, a bonnet, and the large white apron Mary remembers her with. And she would start pulling off garments and throwing them on the trail, hoping the mountain lion would stop long enough to smell and tear up that garment before moving on. That gave her a little more time to run and get home safely. And she did this for decades. 

DP: What would you say was the biggest obstacle Granny Hayden overcame in life? 

MB: I think the greatest obstacle was having to give up her practice because there was this new law that stopped her from practicing. To get a letter in the mail one day saying, this will now be done by medical doctors, that must have been an awful slap in the face. I mean, she’s done this all her life. That’s what she knows. But, you know, people would still send for her. She did not break the laws, but when a baby was going to be born, she would be at that bedside.

One day, somebody came to Granny for help with a sick child. Granny knew she was not supposed to treat that sick child, so she went to that woman’s house and told her which herb to find and told her how to prepare it. The lady did as my grandmother told her to do, and the child got well. So she was working around these laws.

KK: Even though it got more difficult for Granny Hayden to practice, the family remembers her eventually becoming one of the first Black midwives to be legally-registered in the area.

MB: You know, she never boasted about what she did, but she probably caught several hundred babies, if not more. 

DP: How old was Granny Hayden when she stopped her practice? 

MB: She was about 90 years old. She was a very strong little woman. You know, when people think about slavery, they think about hundreds of years ago, not about somebody who died in 1956. These things are important for people to be awakened to history.

DP: So what image of her persists in your mind today?

MB: A little woman in a dark dress and white apron. Sitting on her porch. Looking off into the distance and patting her foot. And behind her are herbs tacked to the wall of the porch. She was a pillar, not only in our family, but in our community. And I assumed she would always be there; like when you’re a child, you assume everything’s going to be there. But I am very proud to have descended from someone like my grandmother. Very, very proud.

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KK: That’s Mary Othella Burnette and her daughter, Debora Palmer, remembering their grandmother and great-grandmother, Mary Stepp Burnette Hayden. Granny Hayden died right at the dawn of the civil rights era at 98 years old.

After the break, we’ll hear from someone who cares for people at the other end of their lives. Stay with us.

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KK: We just heard about Granny Hayden, whose hands brought hundreds of lives into the world, welcoming them as they took their first breath. Now, we’re going to hear from someone who’s there for people when they take their last.

Hajime Koyama, who goes by Issan, came to StoryCorps to talk about how he became a hospice worker. It all starts with the memory of his grandmother, who taught him about death for the first time, when he was growing up in Japan.

Hajime Issan Koyama (HIK): I had my favorite grandmother who was really eccentric woman. She built her living room in the French rococo style, and she slept on bed instead of a futon, and she had a chandelier instead of a Japanese style floor lamp. And I know she was a little strange to the other people but somehow, I loved this lady.

When I was five years old, she had a few strokes and she was bedridden. I was playing in her room with my toys, as I always did. And then she says, ‘Hajime, keep it down.’ And I said, ‘yes,’ and I kept on talking to myself and playing with my toys. And then suddenly, door swings open and I was basically pulled out from the room and I was told my grandmother died while I was with her all alone, playing on the floor at the foot of her bed. But the memory of that afternoon stuck with me because it was a beautiful afternoon. The sun comes in through the window and I felt so warm and protected and very peaceful. 

And then, when I was a teenager, my father died. He was sick with cancer. I think it was my mother came to me and says, ‘We need a little break. Can you sit with your father?’ So I said, ‘Of course, sure.’ And in Japan, parents don’t really touch kids, particularly father-son don’t really touch or hug. But before he died, he started to move his hand and arm toward me. So I held his hand. And eventually I held him in my arms. He looked at me and took three separate exhale with a long pause in between his final breath. 

It’s a strange thing to say, but it was so beautiful. And though it feels very deep and almost dangerous, it was a really wonderful feeling, like the depth of this unknown at the bottom of the ocean. And so, by diving right into it, I really understood that incredible sense of intimacy. So there are plenty of death around me in my early years. But, you know, the foundation of my hospice work has been deeply rooted by what I experienced in my years to follow afterward.

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KK: In the early 1980s, Issan moved to the US. He got really involved in the fashion, culture and entertainment industry. And then a lot of his friends and colleagues started to get sick.

HIK: I found myself in epicenter of AIDS epidemic. It was a really surreal time. One after another, all these beautiful men and women started to shrivel up and die. And I started to feel this accumulated secondary grief from the death I experienced, and I really needed some sort of resources from somebody who knows this probably better than myself. 

KK: This is when Issan heard about a Buddhist Priest in San Francisco. His name was Issan Dorsey. Issan means one mountain; keep that in mind.

HIK: So one day he sees somebody who is homeless and dying with AIDS on the street. He just can’t leave him alone. And he picks this guy up and brings him home. And the next day, he brings another one, and another one comes, and another one comes. So eventually, this temple or meditation center became one of America’s first AIDS-specific hospice. And I really felt very touched when I heard about this guy’s story. So one day I just decided to buy the ticket and I went to San Francisco. 

I saw the sign that says, Temple of Issan; Isaanji. And I immediately broke down at the door and then this guy gently ushers me into the living room and he sits and patiently listens to me for a long time. And he says, ‘I am so sorry you didn’t know Issan had also died of AIDS and I take care of this place now.

‘This morning, a guy upstairs just checked out. And if you want to, you can stay in that room and you can learn how to take care of the people who are dying of AIDS.’ And I said yes. So later on, when I became a Buddhist priest, someone who ordained me gave me the name Issan. So I’m a little, small, Issan [Laughs]. I’m a small one mountain.

KK: Thinking about being surrounded by so much death, would probably make most of us feel sad, but that’s not what Issan would want you to take away from his story.

HIK: We are all together in this painful world, but because of that, this really organic, deep seated sense of compassion arises that puts us together. And in the midst of the chaos and pain and the suffering, that is exactly where the very very pure white flower of compassion arises and blossoms. Nowhere else but in the muddy water.

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KK: That’s Hajime Issan Koyama. He spoke with his husband, Paul Boos.

That’s all for this episode of the StoryCorps podcast. It was produced by Jo Corona and edited by Jasmyn Morris, who is our Executive Editor. Eleanor Vassili is our lead producer. Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd. Our fact-checker is Natsumi Ajisaka. And special thanks to Mitra Bonshahi and Savannah Winchester.

To see what music we used in the episode, go to StoryCorps – dot – org, where you can also check out original artwork by Lyne Lucien. For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Kamilah Kashanie. Catch you next week.