This post is dedicated to my wonderful grandparents. My grandmother's name was Rosa Mae Haddox, and my grandfather was always called "J.C. Wells", which is short for Joseph Caron Wells. Grandad and Granny got married on March 1, 1932. Granny used her middle name (sort of a common thing for our family to do, I've discovered) and so she went by the name "Mae Wells".
Granny was born on March 22, 1913. She was always very kind, warm, loving. She always, and I mean always, had a smile on her face. You know how most people, when they are relaxed and gazing into the distance, have a neutral look on their face? Granny didn't. Her lips were always curled up in a relaxed smile. This is one thing I remember about her. Granny was also very short, which became worse with her osteoporosis. Her upper back became hunched over, causing her to shrink. She LOVE it when I gave her back massages. Also, she always had a pot of beans on the stove or in the fridge. It's just the way it was done. I also remember that for many, many, many years (since when I was a little girl) she had a sore on her right leg. She scraped it when she was not very old and it never healed. The doctors did many skin grafts on it but could not get it to heal. I always wondered why. She was always cleaning it, changing the dressing, and always had a bandage on it. For the last few years of her life, she suffered from congestive heart failure and was in out of the hospital because of heart problems. She finally passed away, at the age of 96, on April 5, 2009. I am so lucky that she gave me a packet of old photographs a few years ago, which I rediscovered a couple of days ago as I was unpacking one of the final boxes from moving to our current house. In this packet was this photo. She was beautiful, and look at all that hair!
Grandad was born May 5, 1914. To me, he always looked the same, and that's to say: old. When I was a kid I was actually a bit afraid of him. He was gruff, and didn't speak to us kids much. Perhaps he just didn't like kids. I remember that he was ALWAYS working outside in the garden or in his tool shed, planting his garden, building something. He was outside all day, every day from the time he got up to the time he had to come in for dinner. After dinner he'd usually watch TV and relax. He taught me a poem about a wise old owl. I don't remember how it went, but I remember I cherished that poem because he taught it to me. When I grew up into an young adult I noticed something interesting about him: he slowed down, took more time to visit with me, and became very loving. He smiled a lot more, hugged me, and enjoyed conversations with me. When he spent time with me he made me feel like I was his favorite person. I'm very glad that the gruff grandfather I grew up knowing mellowed out and showed me that he loved me. And I loved him very much too. He died at the age of 87 on August 23, 2001. The cause of death was colon cancer which, by the time they discovered it, had spread too far to treat. (Side note: My colon cancer is unrelated to his. I am much younger and I also did a lab test to see if it was genetic. It wasn't.) This is how he looked when he was a young man. Very handsome!
Granny and Grandad were married for 69 years, and loved each other until the end. This is how I remember them:
This is a fun picture of them too, as a young married couple. This was taken in probably 1944. My father is the baby that my grandfather is holding.
