I have a lot of trouble trying to upload photos to this blasted blog. Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm up so late because I try over and over and over again like I'm standing at the slot machines.
All I wanted to do tonight was post the obituary photo of my Aunt Ardis. She passed away in the early hours of the morning on July 23rd, much to the relief of the members of the family that wanted her suffering from Alzheimer's to end. She was 87 years old and lived an exemplary life of service and dedication to her family and church.
She was born in a rural setting and at a time when infant mortality was much higher. After her birth in 1919, her mother lost her next two infants in 1920 and 1921 shortly after they were born. The next child was my Aunt Beulah followed by Calvin, my father, and then Delma Jean, Elva, Fay (who died from polio in 1951), Gary and Herbert. Notice anything? All of the children who survived infancy were named in alphabetical order. I'll have to get the whole story on that.
I remember hearing stories about them taking Uncle Fay to Salt Lake City straight from the farm when he got sick and how he was frightened by the elevator. He was only 19. Sadly, polio landed him in an iron lung. He never recovered and his death affected his family deeply. My dad was 27 when he lost his little brother. He'd made it through WWII but nothing he could do could save his brother from a tiny virus.
Ardis is the first sibling since Fay to pass on. That was 55 years ago.
But my family has a rich pioneer heritage. It's one of those family history situations that can make you question if you really have what it takes to belong. People sacrificed to come to this country. They suffered plagues, famines, intolerance, hard work and meager circumstances. Their church called on them for further service, sacrifice and dedication. Yet the family stayed together and is still together. I'm the one who's on "the road not taken" and yet I still value all the things I've been taught. Though I've chosen a different path, I'm awfully proud of my family and respect the glue that holds us all together.
http://www.legacy.com/saltlaketribune/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=18605579
2 comments:
What a beautiful tribute to your aunt. I loved reading it. I read every bit of the obit in the paper too, and liked seeing her younger photo alongside the older aged one. She was still very pretty as an older woman.
Jim, I just want to tell you something else that struck me about what you wrote. It was a small detail, but you wrote that the family was deeply affected by Uncle Fay's death at only 19 from polio.
That sentence says so much. We have someone like that in our family. Well, I guess families are almost always deeply affected by deaths, but I always think of my Grandpa and his sister (my great-aunt Lynn)'s brother Carl who died at 13. I've always heard it described much the same way: that no one was ever quite the same after he died.
Those sorts of statements build a whole world, don't they? Instead of just a name and a date, suddenly you get a quick glimpse of the whole, real person this Fay and this Carl must have been, with humor and quirks and personalities and families who absolutely loved them and still can't quite believe they are gone, all these decades and generations later. It makes me feel sad for what and who we missed.
Aren't I heavy tonight.
Thanks for telling us about your Aunt Ardis and your family's pioneer heritage. I'm glad to have read it.
It seems like we're walking a life-long tightrope hoping to maintain balance with diseases threatening us on one side and crime, war and accidents on the other.
We focus so much on ways to stay aive. There's nothing wrong with that but in the end what does it matter if your life, no matter how long it was, wasn't lived well.
Thank you for reading, thinking and writing both here and in your blog. It's nice to hear back from someone else in cyberspace! I appreciate your time since I know you're running a business, home, nursery, farm, think-tank and doing everything possible to see Macario through his treatments and recovery.
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