Is it just me or has anyone ever started a project and during the cusp of it thought to yourself, "What the hell was I thinking?", well that is this project scanning Grandma B's has been just that.  I am not complaining, so I don't want anyone to think that I am.  Looking back over the last month, I think that there was reason that some of the first pictures that I looked at were of my Uncle Duane.  I feel that I needed to see those pictures to begin this journey.  It was something that should not have been taken lightly.  I began the journey seeing the pictures of Duane, and seeing the pictures of Duane's little casket.  I could have stopped too and not picked them back up.  I can't say that the three weeks that I didn't look at the pictures that I did soul searching.  I actually just needed to remove myself from them.  It has been emotional, but man has it been rewarding.  It is draining, I need to walk away.  For those of you including myself that have Facebook know that it can be fun, and sometimes like really what were these people thinking.  Anyway, I can tell you right now that Facebook if any other purpose that it may have has served it to the fullest for me.  Originally these pictures were not meant to be in my possession.  A couple of the sibilings were going to get together and divide them and scan then.  Well days turned into weeks, and years actually.  We are all busy, to get together seems impossible.  So what I have done is create private albums on Facebook for these pictures were only the family that has been selected can view them.  They are all going to get CD's of the pictures, and the originals will be divided up.  These family members are the ones that keep me going, keep my motived to do more.  At one point while scanning these picture there are my cousins, my parent's, my uncles and aunts, siblings, family in Seattle all commenting on pictures at the same time.  They are all going through the same emotion as I am.  They shed tears over a dad they lost too young in life, us Grandchildren feeling a sense of being lost when it comes to looking at picture of a Grandpa that none of them got to know.  Laughter upon laughter when it comes to family birthdays, hair do's that were all the rage back then, looking at a picture of me wearing a dress, then a year later seeing it on my cousin Jami, then a year later seeing it on either Andrea or Megan.  It reminds us of the days when we didn't know we were poor, we thought everyone shared clothes, that everyone always drank milk straight out of a bulk tank, that everyone had a grandma that when it came time to build a teepee went to the Indian Reservation and got a "Real" Indian brought them to Hickory Township and built one.
Now this project has been hard, and isn't even 1/2 done.  But with every phone call and every text it pushs me on an emotional level to keep going.  In life if you have never been emotionally drained, you have never emotional given.
It is going to be a year next week since she has died.  Grandma was in her 90's when she passed away.  I look at the beautiful woman that she was growing up, and the beautiful woman she was when she passed away.  In life she buried a 4 year son.  She buried a husband and was left with young children, and trying to find a way to keep the farm.  She buried another husband, and her "First" grandson who always said that her house was "A little bit his too".  In life we don't know what is going to happen.  Take a good look at this picture of my young grandma.

If Jesus would have told her right after this picture that in her life she will have to bury her first born child because of cancer, in her life she will have to bury her husband when she has 5 children at home and try to find a way to pay the bills, in her life she will have to bury all but 1 sibling, another husband, and her 1st born grandchild that she so much adored.  That money will never be plentiful.  Any person in her right mind would say, "Jesus the loss seems so great, I refuse to have children, to be married because this way my life may seem happy, and not have so much hurt".  That would make sense wouldn't it?

Now take a good look at this picture of Grandma days before she passed away with what was then her newest great grandchild Liam.

What the first picture doesn't say is that yes you will feel hurt, you will feel pain, your loss will be great.  However in the end your reward will be worth it.  You will have 6 children that will be proud to call you their mom, you will have 15 grandchildren, you will have more than 19 great grandchildren.  Your name will no longer be Clara, it will be Grandma B, Mom, Ma or even Grandma Corella.  Your house will have a revolving door for those looking for an ice cream cone, sugar cookie, donut, coffee, and pop from the back bedroom, which actually turned out to be your closet.  That your grandchildren will tell stories to their children, and that most importantly you will leave this world loved by more people that you can even imagine.  Now that doesn't seem so bad now doesn't it.  She wasn't perfect, she made mistakes, we all do.  But in the end God gave her a life that wasn't easy, but it wasn't too darn bad either.