I really love this photo, I've been looking at it a lot in the past day or so. My fondest memories of this amazing family were the time we spent together from my birth, to the mid 1980's. This is my Gran on my mother's side and all her brothers and sisters. I can't remember how I came to have this scan, but this photo is also up on the wall of my cousin's house.
I think this photo must have been taken around 1930. My Gran is on the far left, she would have been 19 then. Their lives were so different from ours. I remember my Gran being shocked at how many presents us children got in the 1970's and I remember being shocked to find out that they only got an apple and an orange at Christmas, if they were lucky! This was a very close family by modern standards, I think now maybe the hardships of their lives made them close. The family, in the old cliche, survived two world wars, and the poverty of their own childhoods. We were especially close to, in a word that used to amuse me when I was little because of it's potential double meaning, the "Aunts".
My sister and I came into the world when they were around their mid to late 50's. There weren't many other children our age around then and the Aunts really enjoyed our company, there are a huge number of cinie films of us with the aunts back in the 60's and 70's.
As I think about that period if my life again, I think the Aunts must have thought of the mid 60's to the mid 80's as being a golden period. They all retired around the early 70's, there was never much money around, but they had enough to have a comfortable life and they all had their health. Happily, this period of their lives coincided with my childhood. There seemed to be endless family get togethers, and the summer holidays did seem long, before I turned into that strange creature called a "teenager" and they, as it seemed to me at the time, turned into old people.
They all lived into their mid 80's or early '90's. I sometimes wonder if the difficult environment they grew up in helped give them a long life. I hope I got their genes though, and live as long as they did, despite living a very different Californian, air conditioned life.
But indeed, old father time is the most unforgiving parent of all, and Aunt Susan, the last of the Aunts, died yesterday at the age of 93 and a half. She is second from the left in the 1930 picture above and on the right beside my Gran in the photo below.
I remember a poignant moment around January of 2004. She was in hospital and was beginning to fade, mentally. She had just turned 90, but didn't realize it. My cousin told her she had just turned 90 and she seemed really startled by the news. She said "Oh Ron, what happened to all those years", Ron said "Well Susan, you lived them". Lets hope many of them were happy.
I remember a poignant moment around January of 2004. She was in hospital and was beginning to fade, mentally. She had just turned 90, but didn't realize it. My cousin told her she had just turned 90 and she seemed really startled by the news. She said "Oh Ron, what happened to all those years", Ron said "Well Susan, you lived them". Lets hope many of them were happy.
The more contemporary images were taken in the Summer of 1983 with a disc camera (remember them?), can you spot the grainy quality?
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