My cousin Hannah

I don't have a picture of Hannah, except when she was a very little girl. I really should say I don't have a photo of my cousin Hannah, I do have a picture of her in my mind.

Hannah (as well as Micki about whom I wrote in the last BLOG) was one of Aunt Daisy's daughters. Aunt Daisy was my mom's eldest sister, and she was grown up and married not too many years after my mom was born, so her children were only 10 years or so younger than my mother, and in her (my mom's) extended family they tended to be more like sisters. I never heard Hannah or Micki refer to my mom by her first name, though, it was always, "Aunt Rose this..." or "Aunt Rose that..."

The last time I saw Hannah was at my mom's funeral. And, of course, at the afterward at the house Hannah came in and started in---she was a comic, you see -- not a professional comic, but a comic just the same. Hannah could cheer the bark off a tree. She just made everyone laugh. She cheered us up with stories of my mother when she (my mom) was younger, and some of the stories of her courtship with my dad.

I remember Hannah's house in Ridley Park or one of those towns on the west side of Philadelphia, and her entire back yard was a swimming pool. No grass, just pool (in ground) and deck. And I remember her basement because Alan and I would go down there to catch a few smooches. If I recall correctly (now this was in the 60s) it was decorated in orange and gold and brown. Those were the colors of the year, after all.

Hannah had three children who were my age or close, Janet was a year old than I, Valerie was the same age as my brother Mark, and Johnny, was the same age as my sister Deb. I can't say I was close to Hannah's children. I mean we met each other at the family events and we talked and when we were small we played together, but that's as far as it went.

Hannah and her husband John moved to Florida in the late 70s/early 80s and stayed and died there. Hannah lived across the street from Micki in her last years.

I spoke to Hannah about two weeks before she died. What an awesome act of God that was. I had been surfing the net search for cousins, and I found a Hannah with the same last name as hers and I called that person hoping it was she.

She had just gotten home from the doctors and had been told she had lymphoma -- Hodgkins -- but that she was going to fight it and win. Well, I guess you could say she won, because she's with the Lord, but the fight only lasted two weeks. Two weeks after I spoke with her for the last time -- and we laughed a lot during that conversation -- she went to be with her Lord. She told me she was looking forward to that event -- home-going.

So, that's my cousin Hannah.