The Faded Picture

I don’t know much about my paternal Grandparents courting days. They always seemed old to me and I just couldn’t imagine they ever dated. I got some of their earlier life, as any kid would, by listening to them reminisce. Of course as a kid I was too busy or just bored hearing them talk about the old days. Remembering of them talking got me to thinking about all the very far past relatives and wondering what their stories would be.

I have a b-I-l that really got into genealogy and he did the whole thing on tracing our family pretty far back. I can look and see where and when my ancestors first came to this country and this state. It makes me feel connected, but when I look at the dates of the births and deaths, they are no more than just dates to me. I’ve wondered many times what kind of life these people had. Were they good people or bad people? What struggles they had, what joys and sadness and what funny stories they could have told. I just wish sometimes that I knew more about their everyday lives.

Fmom was telling me something about my Grandfather last night. While he and my Grandmother were engaged, and two weeks before they were to be married he had an accident. As a young man he worked in a cotton gin. One day something happened and his right arm got caught in some machinery. It was mangled beyond repair and it had to be amputated. They were to far from a hospital so he had to be taken to a neighbor’s house. Fmom said they put him on Mrs. So and So’s dinning room table and the local doctor preformed the amputation. I hadn’t known this happened just before they got married and I have no idea of what their life was like in those early days. Fmom was saying she would have to ask someone to find out more about it, but while she was saying this a little surprised look come over her face. She told me now that she thought about it, there was no one left she could ask about it. They were all gone.

I know a little bit about my Grandparents, but even less about my Great Grandparents and hardly anything at all about the ones farther back. I can look at the genealogy and place people, but I don’t know what kind of lives they lead or had. I’m luckier than most in that our family cemetery has from my first ancestors that settled here all the way up to the present. I’m also lucky that I got together every old family picture from all the relatives and scanned them in the computer. So I can place some faces with date and event.

As I said at the beginning I don’t know much about their courting days, but I do have this picture. It’s old, blurred and faded, but it shows me a young couple that was very much in love and would spend the rest of their lives together. I was lucky to have known them for the short time they were here.