Grandma Cockerham

Today's photo is of my father's mother, taken near the end of her life, I would assume. There is no date on the photo.

I've often told the story of my grandmother, but it bears repeating. She was bound for college to become a teacher when her widowed father remarried. Instead of the money going to pay for college, the new wife said no. So Martha Roberts was forced to wed Benjamin Cockerham, an illiterate widower who needed a mother for his children. Martha had several other children with Benjamin, among them my father and my beloved Aunt Susie. Apparently, though, she did not care much for motherhood.

Aunt Susie reports that her mother used to beat her children "because she liked to." (Maybe that's why Susie never whipped or spanked her own kids?) My mother told a story of when her mother-in-law lived with them. Not only did she tell my pregnant mother (pregnant with me) that she hoped she lost the baby, but Grandma also would cross the road to the little country store without stopping to look for traffic. My mother would take her to task for not looking before stepping into the road, and Grandma is purported to have said, "They know to look out for me." It's amazing that the old woman lived as long as she did. I have a fuzzy half-memory of going to see Grandma in a nursing home or some kind of hospital ward. She once gave me (and Sheila, too, I think) a little embroidered handkerchief.

How will those who come after us remember us? These days, we're recorded everywhere. My own husband shows up on Google Earth as the map truck drove by our house. (Just Google our address and wait a few minutes. You'll see him in the garage staring out at the Google map truck.) Yet I have no photographs of my grandfather Cockerham, who hated having his photo taken. (There's only one photograph of him that I know about.)

By the way, my heartburn kept me up most of the night, but I'm better now. I certainly won't ever eat that much fresh pineapple again.