Tomorrow will be the 4 year anniversary (if you want to call it that) of my grandmother’s passing.  The last time I visited my mother I stumbled upon a photograph of my grandmother when she was young, Jane Anthony/Richardson/Rogers/Tobey (not all at once) was a creative, smart, independent and beautiful woman whom I wish I could have known better.  The photograph now sits on my bedside table.  The pearls, hair and the red lipstick are so classic in style.  Coincidentally, only two weeks later I found a print out her obituary in my hope chest.  In her late years, her hair was styled in the same way and the red lipstick, was still applied. I can only hope that I’ll be so chic in my eighties.

Stepping back and looking at three generations of her, my mother and I, I can really see where our tastes and interests overlap.  My grandmother was not only an arm chair traveler who read about many foreign lands but also she travelled extensively in England.  Had she lived another life, she may have studied to be an architect as she was avidly interested  in buildings, especially churches and in England, cathedrals.  Having lived in many houses, restoring, decorating, and forever making detailed plans of imagined and actual “additions” to these homes.

She was also an avid gardener who kept journals of there seasonal changes.  She made entries daily in her journals describing the days events, the letters, cards and notes on the lives of her children and grandchildren.  She left her children twenty plus years of journals and photo albums.  She will be remembered for all of the above as well as passing along much of her interests and personality to her children.  She was a frugal woman, a child of the depression era and very practical.  It was important to her to leave her children “all her worldly goods”  and this she did.