I am struck by the passage of time and how family stories can reach out across the generations. Wednesday night is the night where I take a turn spending the night at Grandma's. She is 92. For all of my life she and Granddad were constants, never changing, almost not aging. They lived on the farm in the house where Granddad was born.

They could always be found doing things that needed to be done. Making pies, cooking wonderful country meals, reading books, going to the barn or the shop. In hindsight, I can see a few changes over the thirty plus years of my perspective, but not many. With the sameness came a abiding sense of being cared for and taken care of.

And then in the short course of a year everything changed. Granddad is gone. And Grandma in only a matter of weeks became old, frail. No more sewing or cooking or making of pies but old and tired. So we stay with her now, each day and each night.

So now, instead of feeling unchanging there I always feel like I am racing time, to make sure I mentally record Grandma because now I know I won't always have her.

Last night as we talked, she looked back across the years and her eyes never focused on me. I was sure she was seeing things as they used to be from a world that I have never experienced.

We talked about being afraid.

About as a child being afraid of the dark.

But the dark then, like so many things was different. Electricity was reserved for use where it was necessary and thus the was no electricity in the second floor of many houses. There weren't neighbors with lights on and cars didn't drive past with headlights cutting the darkness. When bedtime came the children were sent upstairs to bed, a lantern was held at the foot of the stairs providing the only light. Then that meager source was gone too. Comfort then came from the sister snuggled in next to Grandma and, I was surprised to find, Grandmother who shared the big room over the living room with Grandma and her sister.

Grandmother would be to me my Great-Great-Grandma. My Great-Great-Grandma who died almost a full 70 years before my birth, who never lived to hold my father, who died when Grandma was only 15. I am a full two generations removed from any physical connection to her. And yet her story weaves it was across the generations and captivates me.

Her name was Sallie and in her I find exemplified courage. In May 1889, Sallie was struck by tragedy. On the 12th of May, her eight month old daughter succumbed to tuberculosis. The loss of a child strikes me a nearly unbearable. But her sorrow must go much deeper as her husband died a mere eight days later of the same insidious disease. So at a mere thirty year old Sallie was left a widow with a young daughter and young son. She was left on a farm that still carried debt with the responsibility of carrying on alone. And she did go on, she farmed by her own will, with the help of her young son, who at eight years old would plow the fields. She did all this in what certainly was in the context of the late 1800's remarkable independence. She paid off her farm, she raised her children and her grandchildren and she touched though the power of her story at least one of her Great-Great-Grandchildren.