Random Flashback for Friday 6/22/12

[Let's start with this ... in retrospect, I probably should have designated this a theme week entitled "Death", since that concept has been front and center so much these past few days.]

Putting that observation aside, twenty years ago today, my paternal grandmother was laid to rest (she passed 6.18.92).  This picture is from four years before that -- August 1988 (my grandma is on the far left) -- and I think it is of her and three of her younger sisters (Bea, Naomi and Edith -- but anyone feel free to correct me or to place them in the right order ...) as she was the oldest daughter of her parents (though not the firstborn, a Charles Russell has that honor but he died way before my time in 1957).

In a nice touch, her pallbearers represented direct descendants of six of her seven children (including me, according to the funeral notice -- although in the back of my head, I feel like I might have traded duties with Gene for that task).  Being so young, relatively speaking, my memories of visiting with her were more about playing outside with my cousins who lived next door -- but I can still close my eyes and vividly recall her row of bobble head animals (back before bobble heads were taken over by the sports world) that "lived"  on the railing between her kitchen and living room.  And, for when we couldn't go outside to play, I remember pulling out the box of toys underneath a table that included a 3d orange cube/block puzzle, which seemed to keep me entertained for hours.  I'm not sure where those toys ended up -- but I do know that I have the 1968 kiddiebook "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" that I read on the floor of her trailer many a time.

Funny what things stay for a long time in our mind.  RIP Esther Mae Peiffer Neidermyer (1904-1992).