The Past:: Never Past

The Past Is Never Past: Part of this task of taking care of my mother involves cleaning up her house, and getting it ready for whatever is next. That business of what might be "next" is still unclear; it might be that Mother comes back to her house, with in-home care. Or it might mean that the house needs to get sold. Any of the possible scenarios requires that the house be cleaned up, and cleared out, quite a bit. So, every day or so, I go over there and check the mail, make sure everything is OK, and I do some clearing and cleaning. I keep on finding photographs that I have never seen before, and it's pretty emotional, sometimes. Here's one: My mother's parents' family names were McColgan and Delany. All of them came here, to the USA, from Ireland, long ago. The McColgans somehow ended up in Southeast Missouri; they were a prominent farming family back around the turn of the (19th to 20th) century. My great-grandparents had four daughters (plus a son who died in infancy): Reba, Ruth, Lee, and Erie (my grandmother). All the girls went to college. Reba never married, and she ran the farm after her parents died. The McColgans lived in Dexter, MO, and they had the first automobile in town, or so I am told. Here they are, probably around 1940.

I can hardly stop gazing at this old photo... These are my people. And they are nearly all gone. My mother, second from the right, is still living. She is holding hands with her grandfather, Papa (J.W. McColgan). He died before I was born; my mother absolutely adored him. It's amazing for me to see the two of them, together. The only other person in this photo who is still living is my mother's cousin, the guy on the far left. He is Gordon Porter Hill, of Sikeston MO. My great-aunts, Reba and Lee, are in the middle, along with Margaret, who was not actually a blood relative, but a part of our family, nevertheless.

And here's another one I don't remember ever seeing before; this is Rip, the dog who was around before I was born, and when I was a baby. He loved a ride in the car. Picture taken probably around 1951.





















Much later (maybe around 1966), my mother and I were on the beach in Florida, with the dog I mostly grew up with, an Airedale named Ruff.