Post by Nutzkie on Jul 26, 2009 13:53:15 GMT -5
As the title of this thread may suggset, I am saddened to report that my grandmother, Hazel Marie Rider, passed away this past Wednesday at the age of 90.
Now as with any person of such an advanced age, such an unfortunate occurrence is to be at least somewhat expected. However, a death within the ranks of one's family is an event that you can never be truly prepared for, I have found. No matter how much you mentally and emotionally brace yourself for the inevitable, it's always a shock when the word finally comes. Such is the ultimate nature of both life and death.
But still, after nearly a century of life and a decade of deteriorating health, we can all rest assured that she is in a far better place now. And this conceptualization leads me to another, more introspective line of thought: The thought of just how much she witnessed in her lifetime.
Born on October 8th of 1918, she certainly did not remember the event, but she was nonetheless alive when the European Armistice ended the First World War. Her formative years were spent growing up in the California city of Fresno, walking with her mother amongst the shops of the Fulton Street retail district, amidst the flash and hustle of the "roaring twenties." From these streets, choked with clanging streetcars and Model T's, she witnessed both the beginning and the end of Prohibition, the meteoric rise of the stock market, and the great crash that brought it all tumbling down.
She survived the great depression, read newspaper accounts of Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic, and tuned her family's radio to President Roosevelt's famous "Fireside Chats." She lived the shock and furry that rampaged through the nation in the wake of Pearl Harbor, and ran an entire ranch by her lonesome while my grandfather served in the war that followed.
She witnessed the rise and fall of Communism, from the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet Union. America rose before her very eyes, from a third-rate, semi-industrialized nation to an undisputed global superpower. The "American Century" was also her century.
As a young girl she watched some of the world's first airplanes land and take off from a field near her home... As an adult she watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.
She played witness to the entirety of the Civil Rights movement: When she was born, slavery in its essence still existed throughout large portions of the country, even if it no longer carried that name. And from this dark place of origin she watched the events of "Freedom Summers" and "Brown v. Board of Education" unfold. She looked on as Jackie Robinson broke baseball's "color barrier," and she would live long enough to see an African-American man become President of that very same nation that once shunned him in such inhuman ways.
She experienced the rise of technology and the computer revolution. As a young girl, telephones for her were large, wooden contraptions, bolted to the wall and requiring the use of a hand crank to operate. As an elderly woman, she communicated via cell phones and email. She may not have been witness to Edison's invention of the light bulb, but she certainly looked on with wonderment as the technology proliferated from the status of mere novelty to become an integral part of everyday life.
All in all, her life was 90 years of sitting upon the grandstand of the world, watching humanity progress, continually topping each new advance with ever greater and more wondrous accomplishments. I can only hope that my own life will one day prove so fulfilling.
Nutzkie...
Now as with any person of such an advanced age, such an unfortunate occurrence is to be at least somewhat expected. However, a death within the ranks of one's family is an event that you can never be truly prepared for, I have found. No matter how much you mentally and emotionally brace yourself for the inevitable, it's always a shock when the word finally comes. Such is the ultimate nature of both life and death.
But still, after nearly a century of life and a decade of deteriorating health, we can all rest assured that she is in a far better place now. And this conceptualization leads me to another, more introspective line of thought: The thought of just how much she witnessed in her lifetime.
Born on October 8th of 1918, she certainly did not remember the event, but she was nonetheless alive when the European Armistice ended the First World War. Her formative years were spent growing up in the California city of Fresno, walking with her mother amongst the shops of the Fulton Street retail district, amidst the flash and hustle of the "roaring twenties." From these streets, choked with clanging streetcars and Model T's, she witnessed both the beginning and the end of Prohibition, the meteoric rise of the stock market, and the great crash that brought it all tumbling down.
She survived the great depression, read newspaper accounts of Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic, and tuned her family's radio to President Roosevelt's famous "Fireside Chats." She lived the shock and furry that rampaged through the nation in the wake of Pearl Harbor, and ran an entire ranch by her lonesome while my grandfather served in the war that followed.
She witnessed the rise and fall of Communism, from the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet Union. America rose before her very eyes, from a third-rate, semi-industrialized nation to an undisputed global superpower. The "American Century" was also her century.
As a young girl she watched some of the world's first airplanes land and take off from a field near her home... As an adult she watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.
She played witness to the entirety of the Civil Rights movement: When she was born, slavery in its essence still existed throughout large portions of the country, even if it no longer carried that name. And from this dark place of origin she watched the events of "Freedom Summers" and "Brown v. Board of Education" unfold. She looked on as Jackie Robinson broke baseball's "color barrier," and she would live long enough to see an African-American man become President of that very same nation that once shunned him in such inhuman ways.
She experienced the rise of technology and the computer revolution. As a young girl, telephones for her were large, wooden contraptions, bolted to the wall and requiring the use of a hand crank to operate. As an elderly woman, she communicated via cell phones and email. She may not have been witness to Edison's invention of the light bulb, but she certainly looked on with wonderment as the technology proliferated from the status of mere novelty to become an integral part of everyday life.
All in all, her life was 90 years of sitting upon the grandstand of the world, watching humanity progress, continually topping each new advance with ever greater and more wondrous accomplishments. I can only hope that my own life will one day prove so fulfilling.
Nutzkie...
