9.21.2009

Monday Morning Memories

This is a picture of my mom when she was 15 and her mom, my grandmother. I've been trying for the past year or so to pull all my parents pictures together since they passed away. My dad's photos are great, he wrote on the backs of almost all of. He went as far as even writing little stories on some. But my mom, nothing! We didn't even find the old photo album of her growing up in Texas until after she passed away. Her childhood was not easy. It was tough for her growing up, her family didn't have much but neither did a lot of people where she lived. I just stumbled across the picture above and below. I figured out, because of what my mom was wearing, it was the day of her dad's funeral. I'd seen her in that outfit in a few old photos of her dads funeral I had found before. These pictures were big enough to have written just a few words, but nothing. My entire life, the only story I heard about my mom and her folks was from my dad, the world famous Mr. Moore! My mom never said much. It was a weird generation, or at least in my family. My folks never talked about personal stuff or my mom's family. The story I heard was that my grandmother had died of cancer when my mom was 15 years old, her her dad killed himself three years later. It wasn't until recently that my sister told me it was the other way around. It was right before my mom passed away, her dementia was bad, but finally after ALL this time she began to talk to my sister about what really happened a day before she died. My grandparents, Hobson Durham and Madge Dulane Durham are buried in Temple, Texas. We took a vacation once when I was little to Missouri to see my dad's family. I so wish he would have stopped in Texas on the way. It is hard for me to understand why they never talked about stuff like that and pretended like nothing ever happened. Those stories are such a part of my family and at least I'm slowly able to piece them together now. A few years ago, my oldest daughter, Brande, was traveling and stopped in Temple. She say her great-grandparents graves, and stopped by the library. She was lucky to have stumbled into a local historian while there. With the information Brande had about my mom's family, he was able to tell Brande where the restaurant was that her great-grandmother had worked at, and where her great-grandparents house use to be, things like that. It's tough when someone has passed away, like my mom, and taken so many untold stories with her. That's one of the things that attracts me to blogging, the stories. There is something left of us, even if its about old cats and flip flops. God, I had nothing to say this week-end, I confess!!

2 comments:

  1. There are always questions you wished you could have asked no matter how long you are lucky enough to have family. I know I wish I had asked more of my grandparents. The stories we blog about now will someday be great insight into our lives for future generations. They'll know why you have so many flip-flops!

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  2. Perhaps not knowing enough about your past encouraged you to go into your business...a business full of memories! There is one thing for sure. You have certainly created your own history for your kids and grandkids!

    Malisa

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Your words are always appreciated, thanks!