Carrie Spence (1920-2007) Isaiah Spence (1921-1983)
Originally uploaded by Lester Spence.
My grandmother passed away last week. She was 87 and had more than a good life. There are a couple of folks who have been using Flickr as a historical repository for photographs of old Jet, Black World, and Ebony magazines, as a place to store scanned slides of twentieth century families. We’ve got pictures for days and what I plan to do is store them here, either under my name or under another account.
What I really wanted to drive home in my comments at the funeral was two things.
First I wanted to drive home the work that my Aunt Sandra did in taking care of my grandmother. My grandmother spent her last days at Sandra’s house, while Sandra bathed her clothed her, made sure that she took her medication, stayed up with her she was sick, drove her back and forth to take care of her errands, etc. My mother did the same thing with her mother. This job is usually thankless and goes without mentioning.
(This job is also the consequence of a bankrupt health policy that puts the burden on regular families, but I didn’t/couldn’t really go there at the funeral.)
The second thing I wanted to drive home was that we are losing our greatest generation, and our last first-step removed connection to enslavement. They leave behind memories in the form of pictures, writings, receipts, etc. We should do our best to retain these memories so that they be passed down.
