The End of an Era

With the passing of my Aunt Eloise at age 88 it is the end of an era. She is the last of my father's brothers and sisters to pass on. They grew up mainly in the 1920s all of them even though my uncle Bob was born in 1912 and my Dad in 1916. And though my mother's body is still alive she hasn't known who I am for about 2 years now. She is 89.

Eloise's family (her father and mother) were born in the 1880s. I knew them both because I was born in 1948 and spent the first 4 years of my life on their land in Lake Forest Park, Washington before my father moved us to San Diego, California in 1952.

Eloise like all her family were amazing, intense, very intelligent, never say die kind of people. I guess you sort of had to be to even survive the first part of the 20th century up through world war II. After that the 1950s were a whole lot easier(at least for Americans) than all the hell that had come before in America and the world.

Eloise married a Navy Blimp Captain Sub Chaser during world War II. When they divorced their son was 5 years old. My family moved to the same city they lived in Near Hollywood, California when he was 13 and I was 8. Eloise was an aspiring actress then. She was a very beautiful blue eyed natural blonde and was in many tv commercials and presentations at the Pasadena Playhouse and in Palm Springs, California. However, she never made the big time as an actress as that is a very comnpetitive business. However, she did marry an actor that had a main part in the Ten Commandments and used to be a lead in several 1940s mystery movies in black and white. They had a son in 1965.

Eloise was the most like my Dad. They were both very intense, outspoken and very individualistic people. I can remember when my parents went to church in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday nights they left me at Aunt Eloise's from about 1954 to 1956. I watched The Wonderful World of Disney with my 5 years older cousin.I was 6 to 8 years old during this time. Later it was called maybe "Disneyland". It had several different names over the years.

Growing up in the 1920s my Aunt Eloise and my father and his brothers and sisters met people born as far back as the 1840s and 1850s. So they met people who had lived through the Civil War during the 1920s. Someone born in 1840 would be 80 or more years old in 1920. Someone born in 1850 would be 70 in 1920. I myself met people in the 1950s that had been born in the 1870s and all my grandparents were born during the 1880s and I met and knew them all fairly well before they passed away mostly during the 1970s when I was in my 20s. In 1980 I was 32.

When my father passed away in 1985 there were still three of siblings left, Bob, born in 1912 and Eloise and Doris. Doris was the youngest and passed away in 1995 from a melanoma. This caused my mother and I to go to a dermatologist and to find both of us had at least one skin cancer too even though not any melanomas(thank God). We just had squamish cell carcinomas. By visiting a dermatologist every 6 months since then we are both fine, me at 60 and her at 89.(Even though Mom doesn't know who she is or who I am anymore).

With the passing of Eloise, the last of her brothers and sisters an era has ended. I feel an incredible vacuum with them all gone now. The world is a much lonelier place without them and all their incredible strength and "never say die" attitude.They always found a way to laugh at their problems and move on. They will all be missed.