Her second husband was working in the fields and climbed up on the haying equipment to repair something. He slipped, fell, and was impaled on the hay fork. He managed to pull himself off, crawled a mile to his truck, and made it halfway home before he passed out. He died three days later.

Hubby #3 had a massive heart attack and landed face down in his mashed potatoes. He either died from his heart or the taters lodged in his sinuses.

So, the next fall/winter there was a bad flu epidemic (this would be 1935 or so, by the way) and since my great-uncle was now a single father of six, my grandmother went to take care of the children, all of whom came down with the flu. Sadly, four of the six children and my grandmother died from the flu – my father was three at the time.

The good news (if this is possible) was that dad was number 9 of 10 children, and my aunts were old enough at that time to raise the youngest. In the end, it resulted in an incredibly close family, one I’m proud to be a part of. Dad and most of his siblings have passed away over the past few years but I always think I was part of a special family because of how they all raised each other. I could (and have) sit and listen to the stories from their youth for hours and hours.

Sappy, maybe, but it’s my family’s story and in an odd way I kind of like it.

Family tragedies – mainly the run of the mill type, but some creepy coincidences: about 20 years ago a friend worked at Montgomery Wards with a woman, call her Kim. One day Kim told my friend “I see the devil in my ex-husband’s eyes.” Not long after, the husband murdered Kim at her apartment, along with Kim’s woman friend and the woman’s child. The ex-husband left his own four-year-old child, who was there, untouched.

Also about 20 years ago my sister was dating a man named Pat. He was divorced with two teenage girls. I saw them once at my sister’s house. My sister hadn’t been dating him two long when a man knocked on the apartment door of where Pat’s girls lived with their mother. Only the oldest girl was there, having just gotten home from school. The guy killed and mutilated her. A year or so later a couple who had lived in this area and read about the crime and since moved to Florida read about a similar crime. They notified the police in this area, and the guy was caught. He was a serial murderer. There was a book written about the case.

My GGM (Dad’s side) was shunned by many locals when she was younger, as she refused to wear dresses. She and my GGF owned a large farm, and she found it (insert expletive after expletive) stupid to ‘flit about in a (expletive, expletive) dress when denim was sensible’. She wore blue jeans, boots, and flannel, chewed tobacco and swore like a sailor. She and my GGF were married for 70 years. She had dementia when she was in her late 90s, and would grab us by the arm and tell us to “Never trust a [insert random expletives] INDIAN.”

My GGM was full-blooded Mi’qmaq.