Aunt Maggie

Today I went to see Aunt Maggie in the residential home.  She is 93 and still kicking.  She told me some more about the stories of how her Grandfather happen to be in the Civil War and lost an eye to the Battle of Shiloh.  Just think, I’m kin to some of the people whose blood filled up the bloody pond at Shiloh. She said he really wasn’t fighting but was on the battlefield as a medic.  He must have seen such death and destruction as 23000 men were killed in the 2 day siege on April 6 and 7 1862. The green fields turning red with blood, bullets flying, the  smell of gun power, the screaming of men as they lay there dying. And his choice to save people as best he could. Shiloh was the greatest battle in America at the time. Seems it’s in my blood to be a medic. This was her momma’s father.  Her mother raised 4 children and took care of her blind father by herself.  He was my great- great Grandfather. Aunt Maggie  loved her mother so much and the way she was raised.  Her mother died in her arms after an accident when they were coming back from a fishing trip and it was a head on collision.  They were traveling in separate cars

and she was behind her mother. My, what it must have felt like to see her mother in a head on collision and die in her arms.

She told me that she personally was proud that she never had a drop of alcohol and said no curse words.  I asked her if she had any regrets and she told me no as I watch her wrinkled face with the expressions there were telling own story. A rare lady indeed. She told me about how some of the ladies at the home would use terrible language and she didn’t understand why they would say those terrible curse words. Ones that would not ever cross her lips.  We talked about the bible too.  She asked me again what church I went to and I had to tell her that I was a heathen but I knew more about the Bible than most folks in church and have read more of it than most.  People talking about things they say is in the Bible when it is actually not there.  I asked her, Don’t you just want to argue with them?  She said no, she just want to leave where she couldn’t hear them anymore.  I laughed about that because of course I would argue with them.

 

Now, onto her fathers side of the family.  I said in my last post about the pages and pages in the phone book of people with the same name up north. Well, today Aunt Maggie told me that they had lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before they moved south.  I told her about what tall tales my grandfather, her brother, told about us being German nobility.  Then she told me that her father had told her about the German nobility.  Her father was half German, they immigrated here from Germany. Von Hassenburg, shorten to Americanized Haase. I thing I spelled it right.  So smell me, I’m from German Nobility.

I had some youtube videos from Celo Green singing “Mary did you know” that came from the Bible mini series and the song from Coverleaf remake of Halleluia of the song and made it about Jesus instead.  She loved them.  I figured she would like the songs because it was the reason for Christmas and not Santa comes to town or jiggle bells. Time got away so quickly. I looked at my watch and was shocked that it had been an hour and a half as we had talked.  I bought her a butter croissant roll and she said it was delicious.  I told her that I had intended to bring her a blue berry muffin but they had sold out.  I’ll try to grab one next week when I go to see her.

My granddaughter is home from school now and I told her I wanted to take her to see Aunt Margaret.  She said she would love to me her.  If Aunt Margaret, Momma, me, Brad (my son who’s dead) and Jessie would make 5 generations.  How I would have love to have a picture like that today.