1950

    When my mother was 45 years old, her mother died.  It changed her life, and therefore  our lives also.  My mother was what I would call a conservative optimist, bowed down by inevitable life discouragements, but always hopeful of the future.   After the death of her mother, my mother would get the blues.  I suppose now it would be called depression.  I was 12 years old  and don't recall how long her sadness  went on; I only remember its effect on me, self-centered as a child that age would be.  Ma would sit in the middle room some nights, after supper, in the dark,  in her  rocking chair near the closet door.  The silence of her grief would permeate the whole house, and my insides would  feel as if they were being gnawed away.  No one made any attempt to comfort her as I recall.  I know I felt I would be intruding if I tried to; she and her mother went back way more than my 12 years, and I was a stranger to most of their time together. I don't remember which triggered the other, but we had a record player at the time, and my brother would play his records.  They seemed mostly about lonesome train whistles and  dead shepherd dogs, but one in particular was pure anguish; it was called "I Dreamed about Mama Last Night," and I wanted it to disappear.  As I said, I don't know which came first:  the playing of the records, or the onset of my mother's blues. Maybe my mother asked for the records to be played.  Possibly it was good therapy in a time when people were not supposed to show their emotions.  I hope so.