A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was researching my family tree and working on a keepsake book. It’s a project that was intended to be a hobby, a brief diversion from the everyday, but it’s taken on a life of its own. I have accumulated documentation and pictures galore, uncovered some family “scandals” and discovered babies who lived for such a short time that no one living knows they ever existed.
While I was scanning several photos onto my computer, my 6 year-old son offered to help. He was keen to ask questions about the grainy black and whites that he gingerly passed to me. He asked about the old-fashioned clothing, the dour backdrops and the sour expressions. His comments, as they always do, caused me to laugh but also to reflect on how childhood has evolved over generations.
He passed me a square sepia photo; the edges soft and worn thin. The year 1929 is scrawled in faded ink on the back. A baby, maybe 6 months old, is dressed for winter. Tiny mittens covering tiny hands, a knitted cap pulled down low, and a blanket pulled up high exposing only pudgy cheeks that appear flush from the cold, a button nose and dancing eyes.
“Do you know who this is?” I asked him; sure that he wouldn’t have the faintest idea.
“It’s grandma,” he said with certainty, without pause, without even a moment to focus on the face of his great-grandmother.
It had taken me a few minutes to place my grandmother’s face. I had to take care not to confuse her distinct features with those of her siblings, consulting the date to prove my guess.
“How did you know it’s her?”
“Because her eyes are the same.” He says this as he scoots off the chair and races out of the room. Bored with scanning pictures and hearing about orphaned relatives.
Of course he’s right. I stared at that picture and compared it with a more recent one of my grandmother, accurately representing her 86 years. I laid both pictures along side several others.
Pictures of her as a young woman with a page-boy and a clingy sweater, as a young mother cradling her third baby on the front porch in the spring of ’56, the undeniably 70’s era shot where she leans into the camera flashing a smile while holding my grandfather’s shoulder, another image of her holding his same shoulder but this time decades later at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration. All of these photos are on the table, looking up at me. The hairstyles, the fashions, the décor are different in each photo, telling a story of their own and yet her eyes remain the same.
But my son was only partly right. Her eyes may be same shape, the same colour blue dotted with flecks of black, but they are not same. They are shadowed now.
I come from a long line of octogenarians. Most of my predecessors have lived well into their seventies, eighties and nineties – even back two hundred years ago. I like to loom this over my husband’s head from time-to-time. I like to remind him that when he finds me annoying after 10 years of marriage, I have the potential to give him at least another 40 more. He likes to remind me that his genes don’t offer such promises. Sometimes I wonder which of us is holding the winning hand.
Times are changing and people are living longer and more enriching lives. For the most part people (who live in this country anyway) don’t die from diseases that their ancestors may have succumbed to. It’s rare to hear of someone dying from tuberculosis or dysentery today just as it was less common to see people living well into old-age hundreds of years ago.
However, it is estimated today that 550,000 people living in Canada have Alzheimer’s disease or related dementia. Like most diseases, the patient is ground zero and families feel the collateral damage. Caregiver fatigue and the Sandwich Generation are hot topics with politicians, policy makers and employers, never mind the voice writers and researchers give to the thousands of people who identify themselves as such.
Lynn Posluns, a long time Toronto volunteer, philanthropist and activist, is one such voice and a powerful one at that. She recently founded the Women’s Brain Health Initiative to raise awareness about the inequity in brain aging research funding for women.
Women are twice as likely as men as to suffer from brain aging illnesses, stroke and depression. In fact, 70% of newly diagnosed Alzheimer’s patients are women.
The WBHI puts out an informative magazine (available online here) with articles written by leading researchers and doctors about how estrogen, stress, cortisol and pregnancy/motherhood may influence your overall brain health as well as simple lifestyle modifications that may have significant long-term benefits.
I have discovered that while my genes my have a ticket for longevity, I want to those years to be as fulfilling as possible.
More and more the research is showing that the choices we make while we are young and healthy directly affect how we age.
I see my grandmother in these pictures as a young woman, a wife, a sister, a mother. I see how she changes with each passing decade. I see how her role changes too. No longer is she the central hub of her family, mothering her four children. No longer is she the grandmother called upon to host family dinners or arrange annual reunions.
Time is sneaky. The photographs are all the proof that I need. Generations pass in an instant leaving nothing more than a trail of pictures, and if you’re lucky, memories.
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Visit the Women’s Brain Health Initiative.
The Hope-Knot designed by Mark Lash, to represent brain health, is available as sterling cufflinks, a pin or a sterling pendant and chain. Prices start at $10.
4 Mothers 
Reblogged this on Attorney at Law Jan Vajda Namestovo, Slovakia.
This was really moving. I have longevity on my side too, and I often wonder how much of a gift it is. My 95-year-old grandmother is doing very well, but her older(!) sister doesn’t known her own children anymore. Thanks for posting this thoughtful reflection. – Meredith
Lovely to hear more about the process of your family history, Beth-Anne. Alzheimers and dementia wreak create such slow and painful losses… it’s important to talk about it – thanks for your piece.
Dementia is a wicked beast. I too have witnessed the haunting changes it brings to a loved one’s eyes. Thank you for shining light on this cause.
Thanks for sharing this, Beth-Anne. I’ve watched my mother-in-law at a young age move quickly into dementia. There are so many question my husband wishes he had asked when he could.