Photographs and Memories

"Photographs and memories
All the love you gave to me
Somehow it just can't be true
That's all I've left of you" - Jim Croce

My mom likes to choose when she decides to give me something. She chose this weekend, when her family was together for the Laflamme Family Reunion (dedicated to her mom and dad, both passed away) that she wanted to pass on Dad's photo albums and his three yearbooks....

After all, I'm the one who's been seeking out the genealogy since he died of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1980.

I was NOT ready for this little bit of "family memory".

The photos are typical for young family members, pictures of happy times and happy people. The sad thing is these pictures, mostly of Dad and his sister, Caroline, who was 8 years older, chronicle the happy years on the family farm. Both would be dead before the 80's.

There are also a couple that I suspect are of his sister's, Lillian, Ninette and Lovina. Ninette was the first to pass at 24, having been married at 14. He would have been only 7 when she passed.

And of course, the pictures of my dad, happy and healthy, well before any of us had cancers.....

Those are the best and the worst pics.