 |
| Taken January 2013 |
I've blogged before about my spouse's last living aunt. As of this week she is 107 (yes, 107) years old. But she's so much more. She is a link to the past, the past that, for all but a handful of us, exists only in textbooks. When I touch her, when I talk to her, I am touching history.
She was alive when the Titanic made its maiden voyage (1912).
She was alive when our country enacted a constitutional amendment permitting the income tax (1913).
She was alive during the post World War I flu epidemic (1918-1919) and vaguely remembers wagons traveling from house to house where needed to pick up the dead (what a childhood memory).
We are fascinated by human wormholes. I've blogged about some of them myself, from the living grandson of a U.S. President who served from 1841 to 1845 to a man who witnessed Lincoln's 1865 assassination and lived to tell the story on a late night game show in 1956.
One story has an interesting twist. It is said that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who fought in the Civil War, shook hands with both former President John Quincy Adams (born in 1767) and a young/future President John J Kennedy (whose life was cut short by assassination in 1963). I can not find any firm evidence for this having actually happened (there is a fascinating discussion online about whether it might have been possible, though). However, Holmes did have a link to more than just the Civil War, where it is said he once saved Lincoln's life.
Holmes, who lived from 1841 to 1937, had fond memories of his grandmother, who could remember red coated English troops marching through the streets of Boston at the beginning of our Revolutionary War. When she was five. In 1776.
If I live long enough, I might be a human wormhole, too. I don't know if that makes me happy - or scares me a little.
Do you know anyone who would qualify as a human wormhole?
Day 26 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge #blogboost
Human wormhole, interesting description.
ReplyDeleteG-d bless Er, 107 years ...
Thank you. Her party was today but we were unable to attend.
DeleteI aspire to be a human wormhole, although I won't have much to report to future generations.
ReplyDeleteYou never know! And I wish for that in a good way.
DeleteSo interesting, Alana. I remember a time before we had electricity in China. I saw my first light bulb when I was 6.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of a human wormhole but Bless your aunt, 107 WOW!! I guess that would make my m-i-l one, she just passed away a few weeks ago and would have been 102 years old this year.
ReplyDeleteWho knows of our blogs will go down in history and outlive us. I was just reflecting on how short a life cassette tapes and CDs have had and laughed at the flash that was 8 track.
ReplyDeleteThere may be a song in those words "a human worm hole."
I think I will just be fodder for the worms, Alana.
ReplyDeleteNever heard it put quite that way before but an interesting concept.
ReplyDelete