My mom's parents, Edwin and Florine Sepulveda...
Not a very good picture of this picture, but my stunning grandmother. Until today, I'd never seen a picture of her when she was young...
My mom and her sister Gail...
Mom
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Friday, July 30, 2010
Generations Past
Today marked the day when I finished cleaning out the storage unit my brother and I had of what's left of my mom and grandparents belongings. It was hard to pick and choose what to keep and what to get rid of as I don't have a lot of room in my house for any more stuff (see: none). So I decided to throw away a lot of my own stuff, mostly art projects and school assignments from when I was a kid that my mom had saved. It felt wrong throwing that stuff into the dumpster at my condo building but it means I get to keep things like albums of pictures like the ones below. Until today, I'd never seen any of these pictures before. I'd never seen pictures of my grandparents when they were young, of my mom and her sister when they were kids and all four of them were smiling and happy. My mom's sister Gail died in a car accident at 21, long before I was born, and I never heard anyone ever speak of her or saw pictures of her. I think her death caused a deep crack in the foundation of the Sepulveda family and things were never ever the same. It was amazing to see these photos today... to look at images of the people who came before me. And it was heartbreaking knowing that they are all four gone now and there's nobody to narrate what was happening in the photos and that my brother and I are the two last lone members of this Spanish/Sweedish clan. This photos makes me miss my grandparents and crave to have known my aunt Gail and the photos of my mom, well... they're like looking at myself and into the soul of someone I knew and who knew me better than perhaps anyone ever will. But I'm happy that for a time, they all appeared to be happy. Good Lord they were all so beautiful...
Mom
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Mom
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2 comments:
God, but you bring out the ache and the yearning. I wish I'd had the privilege of knowing your Mom.
Dear invisible e,
What a pleasure it was to find your blog. I knew your grandmother.
Actually, she did speak about her late daughter Gail to her friends. I remember hearing several times the phrase, "After Gail died . . ."
She also spoke about how much she adored Ned. It sounded like a marriage of great love.
I knew her in the late 1970s as a co-worker at Tektronix, Inc., in Beaverton. We were good work buddies and, had I not been so busy with a young child, I would have arranged to spend time with her outside work. She was delightful.
Did you know she was an outstanding writer? When you went through the storage unit of possessions from your mother and grandmother, did you find her manuscripts there?
In approximately 1978 (give or take a couple of years), Florine Sepulveda won first prize in the annual Willamette Writers Conference with a brilliant, funny piece about growing up as a Swedish American child. All of us at the office were flabbergasted, because we hadn't even known she was a writer, though she was regularly attending our meetings of the "Tek Scribblers" writers' group. Her silence in that matter said a lot about her. She didn't toot her own horn, but she had tremendous wisdom, intelligence and substance.
If you haven't seen your grandmother's prizewinning entry, let me know and I will try to help you find it.
And, yes, your grandmother was beautiful -- even in her 50s, when I knew her. The young guys in the department used to flirt with her innocently. Everyone loved Florine.
I lost touch with her when my husband and I moved away from the Portland area. I will always regret not having written to her.
She would be proud of you for your writing, for sure.
Best regards from Yvonne
ymiranthis (at) ymail (dot) com
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