A Few Words and Old Pictures

My Nanny died last week and we spent the weekend in Arkansas with my family. I really struggle to find words to sum up exactly how I feel about all of it. While she certainly had a long full life and was suffering horribly at the end, it still seems like all this came up suddenly. She evidentally gave all her efforts to being able to join the family for Christmas, which we all treasured.

Of all my grandparents (who are now all dead), Nanny was the only one I ever really talked to regularly and at length, called on the phone, or was called by, and the only one who took care of me as a child. So naturally I'd feel closest to her. And with that I think I'll quote Forrest Gump and say, "That's all I have to say about that."

After the funeral, my aunt told me and my cousin to go through a huge pile of old pictures and take whatever we wanted. It was a nice time to spend with her (my cousin), as most of the time we spend together anymore involves cutting meat into bite sized pieces for our children. We found a lot of old pictures of ourselves and our dads, as well as several pictures of Nanny as a child and even ancestors from further back. I took photos of some of them to post and they turned out much better than I expected:

This is Nanny and her siblings as children. She is the oldest and was born in 1921, so if I knew when Uncle Bob (the youngest) was born, I could probably guess pretty closely at the date this was taken. But I think she looks around 10 or 11, so let's say 1932ish. Something I find really interesting about this picture (actually several of these) is that they aren't looking solemn like really old pictures, but they are all smiling without showing their teeth...I wonder why...

This is the siblings (in age order) all grown up. This picture was taken in 1984. The last "all 5" portrait was taken in 2006. Uncle Johnny, 4th in this picture, died since then. The other 3 are still living.

The sisters, again in age order. There was no date on this picture either, but I'm sure Nanny had to be 17 or so. Aren't they beautiful!

Nanny as "football queen", which we called "homecoming queen" when I was in high school. She went to the same high school that I went to, only I wasn't even close to being the "football queen"!

This is her and my grandpa. She was 18 when they got married and I think this is either their wedding photo or one taken not long after. My grandpa died the year before I was born and Nanny remarried a couple of years later and I always considered Grandpa Raymond my grandpa. I don't even remember when I found out he wasn't actually related to me.

My grand-parents and my grandpa's sister and her husband ran an general store in Holly Springs when my dad was a kid. It was a very full service place - a gas station on the outside and they sold just about everything on the inside. It's hard to tell without looking long and hard at the picture, but you can see that they sold all sorts of canned and dry goods, jeans, shoes, dog collars, bullets, hats, onions, potatoes, bleach, seeds, and who knows what else! Part of the picture got cut off, so you can't see that they had boxes of Kellogs Cornflakes that were virtually identical to the ones they still sell! Also the boxes of Nabisco premium crackers and can of Clabber Girl baking powder look basically the same as they do in my local Publix. Nanny's pictured here with Aunt Net, who was my grandpa's sister and who I did some light housework for when I was a teenager.

And I had to add some newer pictures of Nanny with my kids, which - especially for Annalise - is the only way they will remember her. Caleb talks about her some, we painted pictures for her these last few weeks, but I guess time will tell what he tucked away in his long term memory.

I made sure to take a picture of my kids with each of their grandparent and living great grandparents. With Caleb I was so blinded with love for my baby, the pictures are more about him and less about them, but I realized with Annalise that I take plenty of pictures of her and she will probably be curious about what they looked like when she was a baby, so you can see Nanny better in this one.

I'm finding that having children of my own, it is really different to look at people you know as old people in pictures of them as children. It really hammers at the fact that children don't stay children for long!