My uncle Ron has been going down hill very rapidly for the last year and a half now. Though I know that Huntingtons disease can take 20 or more years to kill a person, I can already see the shakey hands, slurred speech, brain computing problems and yes, his driving is worse than it was when I silently nicknamed him a typical Chicagoan driver.
I've decided to go deeper into my family history, not just for information about Huntingtons Disease, but it seems as though my ancestry is finally starting to mean something to me. Since I have dinner with my grandmother one day a week, I've been asking her all sorts of questions about my family's history. The other night, when I stopped over there, I found that she had started digging out old pictures and had written up biographies on my uncle and my grandfather. She showed me pictures of my grandfather in the Merchant Marines, when he was the Sunbeam Bread-Man and finally, those pictures from the V.A. hospital where he slowly died of Huntingtons Disease.
I'd been worried that maybe I had hit a spot in her that I should have left alone. I could see the tears well up in her eyes, and I could hear her choking down the lump when she talked. She had never been with any other man than my grandfather, and when he died, in 1985, he took her heart with him. She never wanted anyone else.
But tonight, as I entered the house that I spent many a childhood day in, I was greeted with a dining room table for six, filled with pictures and photo albums and family trees. I paged through albums of distant relatives and not so distant ones. I laughed at the goofy pictures of my father as a child and even saw the little chapel that my great grandfather had built so his family could worship even though they lived so far out into the country. My grandmother smiled and laughed along with me.
Then she offered me a large, white satin album, slightly discolored from the years. It was her wedding album. Filled with everything from napkins and newspaper clippings, to black and white photos and the tiny wedding certificate that they had to carry to the hotel on their honeymoon to prove they were married so that they would be allowed a room. I asked her if she still had her dress and she said, "Of Course! Would you like to wear it for your wedding?" I almost went to tears, but realized that it would probably fit everywhere except in the chest area. We laughed about it and went on.
Near the end of the album was another newspaper clipping. It stated that my grandparents were going to be celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary but due to my grandfathers illness, there was no open house planned. To this, my grandmother produced yet one more picture. It was centered on a plaque with a silver covering. In the picture, my grandmother was sitting beside a hospital bed in the V.A. where my grandfather lay. She talked about how she had cake and had given him one bite but that the nurses were afraid he would choke if she fed too much of it to him. It would only be five years from the date of this picture to the time that my grandfather passed on. But I realized, as she reminiced with me, over 30 years of togetherness, that I had not hurt her with my questions but only reshined the golden memories.
~~Love Conquers All~~
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