My Grandmother: A Life In Photos

Last week at this time, I was getting on board an airplane and heading down to see my parents and grandmother.  My grandmother, who turned 94 years old in October, isn’t doing that well.  Her memory has been going for some time, but lately she’s had other issues as well.  Conflicting reports from my parents either had her as heading downhill or at death’s door.  B and I decided that I should head down there to say goodbye as it might be the last time I get to see her.  The boys didn’t come because: 1) I didn’t want them to see great-grandma like that and 2) We didn’t want to pull NHL from school.  B stayed home with the boys, so I was on my own.

After seeing her in person, I don’t think she’s quite at death’s door, but she does seem to be giving up.  All she wants to do is sit and sleep.  I roped her into one game of backgammon but her only real contribution was rolling the dice.  About the only time that my "real grandmother" emerged was when I showed her some videos of the boys that I brought with me.  She smiled and laughed.  My father and I spoke about getting webcams set up so the boys could talk with Bubbe and Grandpa, but perhaps it would be theraputic if they were able to talk with Great-Grandma as well.  Something to think about.

While visiting, I got the chance to see a series of old photos of my grandmother’s.  My mother was trying to decide who to disburse them to when grandma passes away and I decided that they should first be scanned.  The scanned versions could be distributed to all of the kids/grandkids via CD or DVD (depending on how many photos there are).  This way, everyone gets all of the photos even though not everyone gets all of the prints.  My mother and I quickly went through the photos and organized them based on importance.  Photos of my grandparents and father/uncle while they were young got the highest importance.  Photos of me, my sister, or my cousins while they were young were the lowest.

When I went home, I took the 6 highest priority photos with me and scanned them in.  Here they are, along with a photo of my grandmother at her 94th birthday party and a photo of her from this past weekend.