For years, I’ve loved this photograph of a woman I never met, who died while my own grandmother was still very young. She was 30 when she passed of lymphoma, a young woman newly married. She looked just like my grandmother and in photographs the two are difficult to tell apart. My mother was named for her and I have carried her image with me house to house, room to room, not knowing that someday we would share the same blood cancer. I was fortunate to have been born sixy years later. This photograph reminds me to feel grateful. The turbulent waters seem to mirror the expression on my great-great-aunt’s face. Until now, I had not recognized this look. Today, I know it well.
And I found this piece of great advice on the back of these government-issued ration stamps.
Filed under: Family, Living, My World, People, Photos, Surviving Cancer , aunt, consumerism, haunting, Jean, lymphoma, Michigan, photographs, post-war era, ration stamps, War
