My mother’s parents

My mother’s mother died before I was born, a month before my youngest brother was born. He’s seven years older than me. She knew he was coming, and sewed a quilt for him. It’s a beautiful blanket of butterflies in calico sections. During my childhood, that was my connection to her. I saw her picture, but didn’t connect her picture with her relationship to me, until I was an adult. My mother wrote her mother’s life story and self-published it; I own a copy. But even after I read the story, her mother wasn’t a real person to me.

My mother’s father I had a direct connection to. Oh, I didn’t remember him, either, but there was a picture of me in his arms when I was an infant. It was his slippery nylon jacket that I kicked against as a baby; I slipped out of his arms and landed on my head. My skull cracked from ear to ear around the back. For several months my mother was the only person allowed to hold me. My older brothers and sisters, ranging from 7 to 15 years old, couldn’t do anything for me. They doted on me before and after that time, and I adored them.

When I was a year old, my mother’s father died. He was living with our family at the time. He walked across the main street of our little town and was hit by a car, not severely. His ankle was broken, I think. He decided he didn’t want to continue. By that time his second wife, my mother’s mother, had been dead for 8 or 9 years. He just faded away.

My mother felt heartbroken. She didn’t understand, couldn’t see why he was gone. After many days and nights of concern and prayers, she had a dream. In her dream, he was sitting in a chair, unable to see. He was blind. She felt that if he had lived, he would have become blind to the gospel of Jesus Christ. She was relieved, then.

As a widow myself, I have more understanding now. He had lost two wives to death. Not all of his children were alive anymore. I went through waves of grief after my husband died. I didn’t have small children at the time. My grandfather had three young children and my grandmother had four children from her deceased first husband, when they married each other. My mother told how her aunt claimed her half sister to raise, since she didn’t have any children. My grandmother told my grandfather that this little girl needed a stable household, not switching back and forth between aunt and stepmother. My grandmother was very brave, and my mother seemed to feel she was heartbroken when her husband chose to let his sister keep his daughter. My mother was born later, the only child of these two parents.