Dot`sThoughts

Here it is, another family picnic. Another year has gone by. Where did it go, and what did I manage to accomplish in this last year.

Time has gone by way too fast. Hard to realize that it will be 4 long years on July 19th since I lost Walt. Four long years alone in this empty house. Where did the time go? Some days it feels like only a few months have past and other times it seems like a century since I last saw him. They always say that time heals. but they forget to say how much time it takes. I think of my Mom and wonder how she managed her last 20 years after losing her true love (my Dad). I guess making her rice for the picnic got me thinking about her. Well, her rice turned out good according to others at the picnic. I always make a small extra dish just to leave there for my oldest brother who owns the place today as he looks forward to Mom`s rice.

Even the cousins Mexican cake turned out good according to one of her step children that she raised. Today she is in a wheel chair and living in a retirement facillity. Such a wonderful lady, it is hard having her unable to keep living in her own home. Her husband died years ago. Well, she isn`t actually my cousin. My cousin died having her third child and a few years later her husband remarried a lovely woman who is so much like our cousin was that it is surprising. A couple years ago my true cousins daughter asked me if I thought her upbringing would have been much different if her mother had lived to raise her. I told her that Peg ( her step mother) had the same values and way of living that her birth mother had, so no, I don`t think she would have been raised any different. This was the only time I ever had someone marry a second time where the new wife stepped so well in the first wife`s place and was accepted so well by the first wife's family. So much alike, that instead of thinking "that's not how our cousin would have done it", we just watched her and kept thinking how she treated the 3 kids with so much love, and how she acted with the same morals and beliefs they had been receiving from their birth mother. Such a good mother and wife, and when I look back, I remember how much the birth mother had also liked this woman and I know she would have been very happy that she was there to love and raise her children. Originally this woman was just a worker in their beauty Shop, nothing more than a great friend of the wife's who worked for many years under my cousins husband`s rules at the beauty shop . At first an Aunt was caring for the 2 older kids and the new baby was staying at the home of a Nurse on days and the Dad brought the baby home evenings, nights and week-ends. He was a great dad. I was at the hosp with my Mother waiting for a bro`s wife to have her baby when my cousin died. Her husband was standing there talking to us and telling us how happy my cousin was. She had always wanted a red headed baby and felt it was impossible even thou there was red hair in the husbands grandparents day. Well she got her red headed baby and her husband was telling us how very happy she was, when suddenly it came over the loud speaker calling him back to the floor immediately. It seemed his wife was losing blood pressure fast and they couldn`t find where the blood was going. They rushed her to the operating room and started pumping blood into her as fast as they could, but she just kept losing it. An autopsy showed that the baby was so large that during normal birth, he had broken a major blood vessel ion her stomach. I had never before heard of such a thing happening. The baby weighed almost 12 pounds. Today they would have delivered it by cesarean and she would have been alive today. But that was back in 1954. I was expecting at the time of her death and they insisted on my having a cesarean that time due to my size. But mine turned out to be twins, not one baby like hers. Mt twins were born while I was living and renting this same old farm that once belonged to my grandparents- which also died before I was born. we were planning on buying the place, but changed our mind after the girls got burned. Today my oldest brother owns this home and all the farm land and that`s where we have been holding the family picnic every year since my Dad died.

My Aunt was also the Aunt who raised my cousin from birth as her birth mother had also died when she was born and the father and new baby moved in with his sister at the home place on the large farm. A few years later another brother lost his wife and also moved into the home place with his sister, brother and the brothers daughter. I never knew this Aunt`s husband, or either of my Uncles wife's as it was all before I was born. One Uncle had also lost a son in a car accident before I was born. I did have another cousin from the other brother and grew up knowing this cousins three sons. They are all gone today, only one of them was my age and one a couple years younger, the other boy was much older.

Well, this was supposed to be about the family picnic, but the picnic just brought so much back to mind. A short version of the picnic would be to say many attended. I saw some relatives for the first time in many years, others I only saw that once a year as they came from out of town just for the family picnic. A good time was had by all with one exception which was way uncalled for. But, this is getting so long that it will need to wait for another time. Plus, one sister was unable to make it as her husband isn`t doing well and his Dr said definitely "NO" he couldn`t make it that far. ( It is over a 5 hour drive from their home here). They were dearly missed.