Thursday morning I traveled to the little white church where my mama spent her childhood & where my Stewart, Blue, Cameron, etc. ancestors are buried, Cypress. The funeral for my mama’s dear friend & cousin, Sarah Black McFadyen Barnes, was being held at 11 am. For the first time I was the only representative of my family, my mama Catherene’s family, and it was an eerie feeling…<\/p>\n
Sarah Black was always part of my mama’s childhood life & storytelling, and I ran into her every now and then at reunions & weddings, anniversary parties & funerals. An elegant, pretty lady, never without a twinkle of ‘mischief’ in her eye, always laughing & telling some tale or adventure she & “Catherene” had or had instigated.<\/p>\n
Bagpipes led us to the graveside. I stood apart from the group, standing on my daddy’s grave, as the pastor gave his final words to Sarah Black’s family before lowering her casket into the ground. Two uncles & a cousin of mine are buried between my daddy’s grave (& my mama’s in the future) and Sarah Black’s. Sadness overwhelmed me. It was the ending of an era when cousins were your neighbors and closest friends & your history was a powerful bond. The end of lifelong friendships for my mama’s generation. Sadness that Mama’s memory can’t fathom that Sarah Black has died. Sadness that Mama doesn’t know who my sister & brothers & I are anymore.<\/p>\n
But, I came away with another adventure story. Sarah Black and Catherene were in the tobacco barn one Sunday afternoon rolling cigarettes for a trial run with smoking. Evidently Sarah Black went to light the cigarettes, & set her hair on fire! I bet neither of them ever tried cigarettes again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday morning I traveled to the little white church where my mama spent her childhood & where my Stewart, Blue, Cameron, etc. ancestors are buried, Cypress. The funeral for my mama’s dear friend & cousin, Sarah Black McFadyen Barnes, was being held at 11 am. For the first time I was the only representative of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1475,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions\/1475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisper.rps.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}