Life of the Party, digital photograph.

That was grandma’s last truly ‘good’ day. Definitely the best day she had in the months after the fall and hip surgery left her bedridden. She actually got excited. We painted her nails, curled her hair, and dressed her in her favorite fancy pajamas. She laughed as we batted one of the loose balloons around the room. There was a steady stream of visitors all afternoon. She recognized most everyone, and she seemed to recall more and more about herself. I’m glad we have that day to look back on now. Grandma passed away three weeks after her 90th birthday party.

Bearings, digital photograph.

You couldn’t help but notice these gallon milk jugs that’d been tied into clusters with hay string (i.e. baling twine). They were hanging in seemingly random places all around the farm: in trees, on fence posts, on the gates leading to the hay fields and the cow pasture, and along the porch’s wrought-iron railing. Grandma’s dementia had progressed to the point that she often got disoriented after leaving the house, so she made these trail markers to help guide her to the barn, through the fields, and home again. She loved walking with her dogs ‘to the back’ each morning.

Ties that Bind, digital photograph.

A while after grandma died, great-aunt Millie and I decided to clean up our family cemetery. The Wood County Historical Society also helped us reset some of the gravestones that vandals had toppled. Aunt Millie always choked back tears when she spoke about her little brother, Buddy. He was only seven when he died from seizures brought on by a severe case of measles. She firmly believed Buddy would’ve survived if the family had been able to afford better medical care. Aunt Millie passed away at the age of 100 on a sunny evening in early September; she left a generous bequest to the Ronald McDonald House in Morgantown.