As you all have noticed, I am a word-a-holic. I am the opposite of a word miser. I have never met a true stranger and I will make friends with anyone who can hear me, or come near me.
My personality is identical to my grandmother's when she was alive. At family reunions, relatives whom I've only met once or twice in my life have approached me and said the old familiar words, " You are exactly like Mom! " ( " Mom " is my grandmother. Everybody called her Mom. As I grew up in the same town as Mom, all I would hear is " Mom, could you come here? " or " Mom, when is dinner? " or " Mom...Mom!...Mom? " ).
You see, Mom had 17 children and was my Mother's ' Mom '. Mom had 10 sons and 7 daughters. Three toddlers died of the Whooping Cough back just before the First World War that started around 1914 or so. Mom was 14 years old in 1910 when she got married and stayed pregnant for many decades. Two toddlers died the same day. They got sick with the cough and a car came up and took Mom and the babies to the hospital. 3 days later, she came home without them.
Mom walked around the house, up in the West Virginia coal mines area, and looked for signs of where her 2 children who died, had played. She would find a smell on clothing that reminded her of her dear little ones. She saw where they scribbled on the wall. She couldn't understand it all..." Why, God, did you take my babies so soon? " She cried and choked those words out loud.
Then, after wondering in a stupor for so many days, she walked into the living room where she had picked up her babies for the last time that they were alive in that house. She had remembered hearing them coughing and coughing, so she called a friend who had the only car in the area. He came and took Mom and her babies to the hospital up in the big city. As she stood there remembering..she looked down on the floor...There it was....there was something on the floor. A Bible lay opened . She had told those two boys not to mess with the family Bible. She told them that if they messed with the Bible, something bad could happen to them.
It was an empty threat. A threat she said many times before. She didn't mean anything by saying it....So, she bent over to pick up that Bible and noticed it was opened up to a page in the Scriptures that read, " ...Suffer the little children...." She screamed and dropped the Bible! Some of the family in the house came running!
Mom was flat on her back on the floor, grasping the Bible and crying......That Bible was the last thing her two sick babies ever played with.( She later told me she blamed herself for her babies dying because of that threat).
Mom got up after a while and placed the Bible on the coffee table. She lost one more child ( 3 in all) to that Whooping Cough sickness pandemic that was a prelude to the pandemic that was about to hit the world a few years later in 1917 or 1918. It was called, " The Swine Flu " and it killed millions, worldwide. There was absolutely no resistance to fighting it.
Mom lived to be 87 years old. Born in 1896 and passed in 1983. Except for the 3 toddlers who died before 1918, all 14 remaining children, 7 males and 7 females, were at her funeral! All of them survived the Great Depression, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam Conflict.
I was her 2nd oldest grandchild. My brother was her first. She had 49 grandchildren, 72 great grandchildren, 17 great great grandchildren and 3 great great great grandchildren! Amazing, isn't it? There were over 600 people at her funeral!
I miss her very much. We were so much alike. She loved to write.
With the virus going around, I started thinking of her and how she lost 3 babies to a pandemic!
Take this pandemic seriously! Stay home!
David....
My personality is identical to my grandmother's when she was alive. At family reunions, relatives whom I've only met once or twice in my life have approached me and said the old familiar words, " You are exactly like Mom! " ( " Mom " is my grandmother. Everybody called her Mom. As I grew up in the same town as Mom, all I would hear is " Mom, could you come here? " or " Mom, when is dinner? " or " Mom...Mom!...Mom? " ).
You see, Mom had 17 children and was my Mother's ' Mom '. Mom had 10 sons and 7 daughters. Three toddlers died of the Whooping Cough back just before the First World War that started around 1914 or so. Mom was 14 years old in 1910 when she got married and stayed pregnant for many decades. Two toddlers died the same day. They got sick with the cough and a car came up and took Mom and the babies to the hospital. 3 days later, she came home without them.
Mom walked around the house, up in the West Virginia coal mines area, and looked for signs of where her 2 children who died, had played. She would find a smell on clothing that reminded her of her dear little ones. She saw where they scribbled on the wall. She couldn't understand it all..." Why, God, did you take my babies so soon? " She cried and choked those words out loud.
Then, after wondering in a stupor for so many days, she walked into the living room where she had picked up her babies for the last time that they were alive in that house. She had remembered hearing them coughing and coughing, so she called a friend who had the only car in the area. He came and took Mom and her babies to the hospital up in the big city. As she stood there remembering..she looked down on the floor...There it was....there was something on the floor. A Bible lay opened . She had told those two boys not to mess with the family Bible. She told them that if they messed with the Bible, something bad could happen to them.
It was an empty threat. A threat she said many times before. She didn't mean anything by saying it....So, she bent over to pick up that Bible and noticed it was opened up to a page in the Scriptures that read, " ...Suffer the little children...." She screamed and dropped the Bible! Some of the family in the house came running!
Mom was flat on her back on the floor, grasping the Bible and crying......That Bible was the last thing her two sick babies ever played with.( She later told me she blamed herself for her babies dying because of that threat).
Mom got up after a while and placed the Bible on the coffee table. She lost one more child ( 3 in all) to that Whooping Cough sickness pandemic that was a prelude to the pandemic that was about to hit the world a few years later in 1917 or 1918. It was called, " The Swine Flu " and it killed millions, worldwide. There was absolutely no resistance to fighting it.
Mom lived to be 87 years old. Born in 1896 and passed in 1983. Except for the 3 toddlers who died before 1918, all 14 remaining children, 7 males and 7 females, were at her funeral! All of them survived the Great Depression, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam Conflict.
I was her 2nd oldest grandchild. My brother was her first. She had 49 grandchildren, 72 great grandchildren, 17 great great grandchildren and 3 great great great grandchildren! Amazing, isn't it? There were over 600 people at her funeral!
I miss her very much. We were so much alike. She loved to write.
With the virus going around, I started thinking of her and how she lost 3 babies to a pandemic!
Take this pandemic seriously! Stay home!
David....