Scarlet Fever

Our guest room, which my niece affectionately calls the “dead family gallery,” is covered in photos of relatives. Many of the photos are old, taken in the early to mid 1900’s, and the subjects’ dress, hair, and setting suggests a different era.

One picture in particular intrigues me. It’s a photo of my grandmother, Doris Vaughan, a woman I never met. Grandma Doris was born in 1901. She married my grandfather, Raymond Blaisdell. They had only only child, my mother Anne Longfellow Blaisdell who was born in 1930. Doris developed scarlet fever, essentially strep throat coupled with a body rash. A relatively minor disease today that can be easily cured with antibiotics, scarlet fever left untreated can develop into the more serious rheumatic heart disease. Doris developed rheumatic heart disease, which inflamed and permanently damaged her heart tissue. She died a few months after contracting the fever. My mother, aged nine at the time, recalls walking home from school, knowing that she would receive the news of her mother’s death that day. An only child, my mother never fully recovered from that loss. I often wonder what her life might have been like had her mother lived and raised her.

Gram's Chair

When my grandfather died exactly two weeks shy of turning 100, I drove down to Clearwater, Florida to take care of his belongings. My grandmother had died years earlier, and most of their furniture, books, and clothing were in storage. Funny how we didn’t distribute their things years before when Gramp went into the nursing home, as if there was always the chance that his aging might reverse itself like some tumor that miraculously shrinks.

Most of their stuff I gave to charity. They collected a lifetime of objects, and yet I found little of anything that I wanted. Except, that is, my grandmother’s rocking chair.

My grandfather always sat in a sizeable, comfortable recliner that enveloped me as a child. A tall, significant man, he filled the seat and commanded the room. My grandmother, however, sat in a petite rocking chair with wooden arms and a narrow frame. Strangely, I don’t know what happened to his recliner. Perhaps, it was in his nursing room at the end. Her chair rests in my living room.

Both of them were born near the turn of the century; he, a few years before, and she, a few years after. He was a principal, and she was a teacher. They prized scholarship, good conversation, travel, and decorum. They taught me to hone my thoughts and my expression.

When I sit in her chair, I imagine her small frame gently rocking, a diminutive figure who left a prodigious imprint. Each of us stands on the shoulders of those who held and continue to hold us up. My grandparents’ arms bore me the highest, and the view I now see I owe much to them.

A Graveyard Riddle

Today, I hiked the brief path on the Cochran Shoals biking trail to survey once again a small graveyard I discovered years ago. It seems somewhat strange to discover an intimate family plot such as this one in the middle of these woods. There appears to be only a few graves - one large grave that memorializes a family - and one regular stone for a woman of a separate name. All sorts of questions come to mind as I note the ages and names of the graveyard's inhabitants. When I came home later, I was surprised by how many puzzle pieces I was able to connect. Nevertheless, many frustrating questions remain. Old gravestones provide such riddles, beckoning us to solve the mystery of who their inhabitants truly were - their loves, losses, and dreams.