She's in Every Picture

This is a photo of my grandfather's family. He is seated in the front on the left. He claims that he had rickets and couldn't walk until he was two. Beside him, his older brother Roy and younger brother Bert. The boys' mother is standing in the back smiling and her sister-in-law, Auntie Bertha is beside her.

Now, I was starting to write about my grandfather and I just have to interject this while I think of it. Auntie Bertha. She lived to be 102.5 or 103.5 and she is found in nearly every darn photo I have on my Dad's side of the family. She never had children, although she did marry. Was this the reason for her longevity. I have to say, I have never heard whether she was good or bad or ugly, but I have yet to see a picture of her smiling. Maybe she was just caught off guard by the flash of the camera. I know that happens to me. Thank God for digital photography.

This picture tells the stories of Auntie Bertha's insistence on being in the family pictures, my Grampa's rickets and the missing eldest brother. The eldest brother, Jack was left in England during the war when they moved to Canada. As a result, he was schooled there with his maternal grandparent's family. The younger 3 brothers were all born in Canada and met their brother later in life when he stepped off the train in Canada for the first time. Imagine being a teenager and meeting your brothers for the first time? I'm not sure where their father is here. I'm guessing that he may have passed away at this point in time. My great-grandmother looks happy and I'm sure that she was a clever woman as she would cheat at cards while playing my dad in his youth. So, her cleverness or wit is what I imagine her with. All of this is left to my imagination. For the only person I knew in this photo was my grandfather. He was an extraordinary man and my father is proof of that. He was taken from us over 25 years ago to the horrible grasps of cancer. I'll never forgive you, cancer, for taking him from us while he was only 69 years old.

signed, the willow