The Twelfth Card Of Christmas

This postcard was given to me by Grandma Jean, a woman I love more than life itself. She is 97 years old and the kindest, most loving person I have ever known. We are not related but in my heart she is my family and the grandmother I never had. She once told me that she got up each morning assuming that the day was going to be beautiful. She is always in a good mood.

I have a huge postcard collection, started for me by my father when I was in my teens and kept in a six foot tall revolving rack in my living room. A Starbucks, a newsstand and a few airplanes and I could pass for an airport.

Friends send me postcards all the time and this was one that Jean passed along many years ago. There is no postmark so I don’t know what year it was sent. There’s a one-cent stamp on it and it’s addressed to Jean’s maiden name on R.R. 10 in Indiana. She married her husband John in 1928 after dating him for a year so obviously it was sent before then. The back of the card is signed ‘Shorty’. When I decided to run the card as the last in the Christmas card series, I called her in the assisted-living facility where she now resides in Ohio and she didn’t remember anyone named Shorty from her youth. I don’t remember yesterday, what am I going to be like at 97?

Jean and John were married for 59 years. Jean’s parents were married for over 60 years and her grandparents were married for over 60 years and Jean always talked of that missed year with regret.

John died of Alzheimer’s in their 59th year. Please support stem cell research.

End of chat.

End of cards.