The lady pictured at the left of the page is my mother.  It was taken as she was enjoying the company of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Mother passed away the day after Thanksgiving back in 2010 after having had a stroke.  She was 82 years old.  Mother was the inspiration for my genealogy work and trying to reconnect with family.  We all miss her very much.

Mother never worked outside of the home, but she had worked very hard to make our house a home.  She never made a garden.  She always left that to dad (and me when I was still at home).  She did the hard part though, she put the vegetables up in the freezer or canned them after we had picked them.  She sewed for friends and family.  She made clothes for me or bought me clothes with the money she made sewing for people.  She loved to sew and was good at it.  She stood by my dad for over sixty-two years, forty-three years of which dad has been preaching.  Being a preacher’s wife is not an easy life some time.  She taught children’s classes at church up until a few years recent and had some funny stories out of that (ask me about the song “We Will Understand It Better By and By” sometime).

Mother’s memory had left her. Most of the people that she remembered and longed for, her mother, father, sisters, and brother, were already passed on.  Several times she had asked me if I had heard from her mother and father and I had to remind her they had been dead for many years.  My sister and I were still familiar to her, but she did not remember us as being her children, she had lost the memory of those years of her life.  Much of the time she thought my dad was her dad or someone else (she said one time she thought he might be one of the Knox boys (her nephews) playing a trick on her).  She also no longer recognized her home of forty-five years nor the mountain in front that she always had loved looking up at.  But on Friday, November 26th., the angels carried her spirit to paradise where she is now comforted, and we are comforted knowing that her spirit is safe with God..

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