Christmas 2012

Barbara had her Christmas pictures made yesterday...she surprised me with this very special one...

"cast me into morning, for the night has been unkind

Love Someone

We had known one another for only eleven days and then he was gone...yet at age 21 he would write "the authenticity of our love I'll never doubt".

When You Love Someone

Boos to ya!

Homesick

Your in a better place I've heard  a thousand times
and at least a thousand times I've rejoiced for you
But the reason why I'm broken
the reason why I cry
Is how long must I wait to be with you.

I close my eyes and I see your face
If home is where your heart is
then I'm out of place
Lord won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
I've never been more homesick than now.

 

 

Who Will Be Holding Your Hand

Watching your beloved struggle to hold on to life and finally take their last breath is something that impacts you for the rest of your life.. and re-enforces  this truth:
 " at the end of your life, it really doesn't matter what car you drive, what you're wearing, or how much money you have in the bank - what will matter is who is holding your hand & the impact you made on their life & others'."

blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

 Alice Lee Erwin Thurmond Sasser. 1917-2005. Covington, TN

" ....Mrs. Sasser also was a pioneer... a former tax assessor of Tipton County...  first women to be elected to that office in the state... long-term member First United Methodist Church of Covington. .. first woman to serve on the Board of Stewards ..Sunday School teacher many years... . also involved in numerous book clubs and other civic associations.
The joys of Alice Lee's life were her family, her church, her friends, Tipton county and all the children of the world. She never met a young person, of any age, whom she did not love and for whom she did not have time. She touched many lives."

   one of those lives was mine...

 It was the summer of 1945...I was 10 years old...  my father was not the kind of man who could or "would" accept the responsibility of caring for his family...he had someone drive us..mother and  her five small children..from Houston to her  home town, Covington,Tennessee.. my grandmother took us in..520 West Liberty. It was the large, two-story house that my mother had grownup in...but at that time it had been turned into three apartments...2 on the lower level and one upstairs.  The 7 of us  (grandmother, mother and the five children) occupied two rooms and a small kitchen on the upper level)..I think the kitchen had, at one time, been a large closet..the ceiling sloping down on one side. There was a table, of sorts, a bench on the side of the table that had the low, sloping ceiling..(standing was not an option on that side of the room)...and wooden crates (boxes) turned upside down to use to sit on.... one cabinet on a wall and another closed-in area with shelves...Storage space was really not needed for we had nothing...There was an old gas stove for cooking but no running water...we would draw a bucket of water from the bathroom across the large hallway, carry it  to the kitchen to wash dishes in a tin dishpan.. I don't remember how our clothes were washed...maybe in the bathtub..The upstairs bathroom was shared with  tenants who also rented a bedroom and kitchen on the upper floor....an elderly couple....well, not sure how elderly they were...at the time, to me,  anyone over 50 was elderly :).
One of our two bedrooms was "Minnie's room"..She had a bed and dresser, a rocking chair and a card table ...I remember her working puzzles on that table...her only pleasure other than her church. She grew a garden in the back yard and raised chickens for us to eat.She was 70 years old when we moved in with her...what a hardship that must have been...
She was a tiny, frail looking lady but she was anything but frail!!! she lived another 22 years.
The second bedroom that was part of Minnie's apt. was occupied by mother and us five children (ages newborn to 12 yr.) ..there was one bed that the 3 oldest of us slept in..a "roll-away" bed that mother and Nickey (the baby) used for sleeping: a  walk-in type closet that had a cot in it where brother Ed slept.

Picture: the child was my mother..her mother and her grandmother... this is the home mother grew up in and where she and her five children lived for 10 years..

I write about this to show the comparison  between our home and life...and the home and life that was across the street...

Ms Alice Lee lived across the street....

hers was a small modest home...but one filled with "living" ...normal "family" activities.. meals being prepared, laundry being folded, clothes being ironed, her 3 children running in and out, laughter, someone playing on the piano...just the regular routine of "home"...but for me it was a God send.

I spent many hours just sitting watching her do her chores...she talked to me, encouraged me, and comforted me when Bob left for Germany, and she was always...always there for me sharing her life and family.

 a picture taken on one of our trips back to Tn...

Mother did the best that she could under the circumstances and I  certainly admire her as well...but her life at that time and many years to follow was bleak, cheerless, dismal and needy...it's very hard to give any kind of joy to others, even your children, when there is NO joy in our own life.

 Mother   1914 - 1993

 

  

A Grief Observed

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He
 knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock,the witness box

 and the bench all at once. He always knew that ”my temple was a house of cards. His only way of 
making me realize the fact was to knock it down.

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

from letter #23 dated Aug.5th. 1951

"All my dreams seem so futile when I think of the time and distance that separates us. But, again, that's life.  Sometimes I think it's all just a plot to keep me from reaching the unattainable, "perfect happiness.".   I realize now that those hours were the happiest of my life"
http://lettersfromnurnberg.blogspot.com/

Memories

“There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well.”
― Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember

 

On Grief

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.
I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
CS Lewis

first love - last love

Anna and Jeremy

On March 24 of this year Anna, the daughter of Sherry Harding Veal (a long-time friend of Barb's) married her beloved, Jeremy.. A few short weeks later Jeremy took a new job and went to Memphis for training as a Sub-Contractor for CVRS Telecommunications, installing cable TV, Internet, and phone lines for Mediacom in Northern Alabama. During a training exercise he fell and sustained serious head injuries... This video is for them


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMG6f6H3-u0&feature=g-upl

I Will Wait For You

It was so easy for me to fall in love with you. You were what I had been waiting and longing for. I am 77 years old and I've loved your since I was 16... The hardest most painful thing I've ever experienced is being away from you... I miss holding your hand, sitting side by side in church or in the theater... shoulders touching...I miss having you in bed beside me, hearing you snore..I miss looking across the room and seeing you there, even thou we could go for hours without talking we were together...we were there with each other...I miss your encouragement...I miss hearing your voice... When evening comes and I'm so alone, I close my eyes and I can feel your strong arms wrap around me, your sweet kisses and whispers of "I love you". My heart breaks from loneliness. My soul prays that we will be together again. I'm longing for that moment. God knows how much I miss you. We may be apart, but my love for you is even stronger. My Love, all I want is to share each moment with you... for now I will wait for that moment.

Gone From My Sight

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.


Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight...that is... all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:" Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

Henry van Dyke

Vintage Photo Friday...a few hours late as it is now 4am Sat.

Bob's mother, Emma Marie Randolph Peete died in 1939 at the approximent age of 30 years...Bob was 10 years old. We know very little about her. I never realized how much they favored in looks until I put these two pictures together. 

I wonder what she was like.........

Something New...Vintage Photo Friday

This photo is of my fathers' mother,  Martha Evangeline Bagwell Stallings; the baby in her arms was my father, Edward Verious Stallings  1914-1965, and the little boy is his brother Walter Bryant Stallings... Later there were two additional children born to Martha: Earl Stallings and  Margaret  Stallings Beam.
they resided in North Carolina.

Re: my Uncle Earl:
The Reverend Earl Stallings was an American Baptist minister and activist in the U.S. civil rights movement. Earl Stallings was born March 20, 1916 in Durham, North Carolina. He died when he was 89 in his retirement home in Lakeland, Florida on February 23. 2005.
 The Rev. Earl Stallings was a  prominent Baptist pastor in Birmingham, Ala., who in 1963 risked the rejection of his own white congregation, and worse, by seating African-American worshipers among them at his Easter service and urging reconciliation amid the city's erupting racial antagonism.
Reverend  Stallings was one of eight signers of the open letter "A Call For Unity," which precipitated a critical response from Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Despite this, Stallings was the only clergy whom King praised by name in his letter, given that Stallings had opened the doors of his church to black worshipers. This same action angered members of his white congregation. One of the blacks allowed in was the civil rights leader Andrew Young. As a result of his moderate stance, Stallings became a target of both conservative segregationists and liberal integrationists. Tension over the issue so divided the church that it eventually split over the issue, following Stallings' departure.



Rev. Earl Stallings                                                                              Edward Verious Stalling 1944

 

 

In the Arms of an angel

In the arms of an Angel, far away from here

From this dark, lonely room, and the endlessness that you fear

You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie

In the arms of an Angel; may you find some comfort here

2006

There's no such thing as too many flowers..

There's no such thing as too many flowers..

Family Tree Picture Wall

My latest (indoor) project...saw this lovely creation on Pinterest...
and I have to try it...

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my current "picture wall"

work in progress: pictures down...

projection of my drawing...'think I need to enlarge the trunk some....and I don't know how I will get the shading in the branches as seen on Pinterest...sponge paint??? any suggestions??? anyone???