Category Archives: Family

Grandpa’s Chair

Family, Memories, Things, ,

My grandparents had a child’s rocking chair when they lived in Elgin. Generations of children sat on it and I really wanted to own it someday for my own children. It went to my Aunt Ginny, the only of my mom’s siblings who didn’t have children. I think I did ask her for it when Clare was born, but she wasn’t ready to let it go. After she died it sat in storage until last April when Dean and I picked it up in Mississippi. So while I have no photos of my kids in the chair, I do have some of my granddaughter in it.

I don’t think there are any photos of my grandfather in the chair, but here he is as a child in the arms of his mother, Jessie, and standing next to her mother, Nettie McCornack.

My aunt Ginny was photographed sitting in the chair, however, in this photo taken on the porch of 501 Raymond in Elgin. L-R: Uncle Dick, Aunt Nancy, Grandpa Green, Grandma Green, Mom, Uncle Bud, and Aunt Ginny in the rocking chair.

We celebrated Mother’s Day in Bethesda shortly after returning from Mississippi and had Lassen try out the chair. She wasn’t impressed.

A few months later she liked it better.

I love this chair and its history. Hopefully it will be used by more generations.

Irish Girl and Little Jack Horner

Family, Things,

When my kids were young, probably in elementary school, my mother gave them each a china doll. Andrew was given Little Jack Horner, complete with pie and stool (although those are missing). Clare received an Irish girl that sported red hair and a tartan skirt. They were supposed to be kept until they didn’t want them anymore, then, because they were destined to be collectors’ items, sold for a small fortune. Sounds familiar, right?

Well, these Ashton Drake dolls are maybe worth up to $50 right now and that is probably not going to change for the better. Neither Clare nor Andrew want their dolls, not even to try to sell. I don’t have a strong attachment to Little Jack Horner, although he resembles Andrew as a boy a bit with the blond, blond hair. I do like the Irish girl doll and will probably keep her for a while.

I don’t think that hat is actually his
She may have come with a hat

Planting Ginny and Jack

Family, People, ,

Aunt Ginny died at the end of 2015, Uncle Jack followed her in 2020. They didn’t want funerals or obituaries. Uncle Jack told me that when he died he wanted his ashes mixed with Aunt Ginny’s and spread on his land in Mississippi. My cousin Joey, with whom the cremains resided for the past several months, said that Uncle Jack wanted their cremains scattered in the waterway in front of their house but Aunt Ginny disagreed because she couldn’t swim. That might be true — but she was actually repeating what her mother, my Grandma Green, said about her ashes.

That is good and all, but sometimes things don’t work out the way one hopes. He didn’t expect that their Trust would have been messed up so much that it took over three years to settle. By that time someone else lived on his property and when Dean and I came into possession of Aunt Ginny and Uncle Jack’s cremains we were reluctant to knock on their door and ask if we could spread their ashes on the property. We also didn’t want to pour them into the waterway because of Aunt Ginny’s request.

While we were still in Mississippi I reached out to Joey to see if he’d be willing to have them on his property, mixed together in a biodegradable urn, planted in the ground with a tree planted over them. Another cousin liked that idea as did my brother but Joey never got back to me. I think he was just happy to be rid of the ashes.

We brought Aunt Ginny and Uncle Jack back home, thinking maybe my brother could bury them on his property beneath a sapling (he wasn’t thrilled), or maybe we could find somewhere in Elgin or South Elgin might allow us to either bury or scatter them.

In the end I bought a kit from The Living Urn and when Clare was in town last month, put the cremains in the ground under a native butterfly bush. We had a small ceremony, played their song, Moon River, and that was that. Like I said on Facebook, it wasn’t what they wanted but it was the best we could do. The Mississippi cousins were neither welcoming nor helpful.

We were married in a cemetery and we now live in one.