As I get older, I think more and more about where I came from. My memories going backwards stop with information about my maternal grandmother's family and to that end I have an old photograph which I obtained from my mother and which may have been given to her by an uncle or great uncle. I've dated it 1904 as my grandmother, who appears in the background, looks to be about 10 years old. My grandmother's name was Elizabeth Orilla and I was named after her and my paternal grandmother, Helen. However, I do not use either name although they both appear on my grave marker.

It's a funny thing, but the look on my grandmother's face is really the kind of person she was and remained throughout her life: sour, dissatisfied, mean and egotistical. The rest of the Graham family were more kindly. One of the brothers remained a bachelor all his life and I remember him coming to a family reunion while he was staying with my mother in Edmonton. He was undergoing radiation treatments for cancer and he didn't live long after that (the reunion was in 1964). As a child, I remember seeing his bachelor pad and thinking how sad it was that he slept on what appeared to be a round bench without a mattress or sheet. But memories sometimes play tricks on me although I know the emotion the memory elicits is genuine.

My great grandmother had at least 5 children, one of whom died in infancy. She was a very happy person, according to my mother. I have a picture of her and my mother walking down the street in Calgary wearing similarly flowered dresses. I love that picture.

My maternal great grandfather did not live to be an old man and I think he may have been difficult to live with. (Mom once told me the story of one of the grandmothers, either hers or mine, getting very angry at her husband for drinking and coming home drunk. He fell onto a rug by the doorway and grandmother rolled him up in the rug and beat the rug in anger at his drinking. I think William Anson may have been that grandfather, but the story is apocryphal.)

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