Grandmother

As the days approach closer and closer to my birthday, I can't help but feel some sadness as well as loss. I do not grieve for what I had and lost. I grieve for what I never had. I have her painting in my dining room. As I glance up to it, I see myself in her face. She is a woman, I never got to meet. She is a woman who died fifteen years prior to my own birth. She is a woman who died two days after childbirth leaving behind a husband and two children ages 16 & 11 in addition to a newborn son. She was my paternal grandmother.

I was told she had blond hair and blue eyes. I heard she was sweet and kind. I heard she was unhappy in her marriage and knew she would die. I was told, she hung baby clothes out on a line to dry and glanced back at them as she walked away saying, "I will never see the baby wear those clothes". She gave birth at age 38 yrs old to a son February 17, 1945. She had a blood clot to the brain that facilitated a stroke. She laid in a coma two days before she died on February 19, 1945. She never held her newborn child nor placed those clothes on him that once hung in the wind in the backyard.

She was laid out at home. She was buried across the street in Laurel Hill. It was said, the infant child was placed in a cradle next to the mother's casket as he would know something of his mother as she would of her child. It was the custom. Though morbid to modern life, it was normal for years gone by.

I never knew her. I only knew about her. I wish I knew her and often wonder if her influence in my life would have impacted my decisions or lack of? I know I lost out on a loving sweet kind grandmother. It is sad, her husband was abusive. It is sad, my own father would lose his mother at age 11 yrs old and live with a father who neglected him. It is even sadder that the one positive in my father's life, his own maternal grandfather would die later in that same year 1945.

Life seems so cruel and unfair. God gives and takes away. I guess I should be grateful that I never got to know her and then have her taken away. I would change it all if I could just to know her love for one single day.

Grandparents are important in a child's life. I believe that with all my heart. God bless and take care of you Mary (Marie) Anna Schroeder Weleski.