Generations of strong women

I turned off the dreadful news and put on some holiday music...when Winter Song and then Canon in D were playing my mood became meloncholy and missing my mom...then as I becan to sift through some old photos I found one of my paternal Grandmother ...its her in the lower left.  She and I were sitting on a long tree by their home.  Their home was in front of the nursery run by my Grandfather...then my Dad and now my youngest brother.  They were all arborists as my brother still is in Cleveland Ohio.But the tree  bench, the nursery and the family home and land are gone/or have become something else and my Grandmother died when I was five---shortly after this photograph I supose.  My Mother is in the upper left and her mom, my Maternal Grandmother in the upper right.  I never had the fortune to meet this Grandmother as she died when she was only 54 of colon cancer and a medical misdiagnosis.  My mom died in 2001 at 83.  I'm the lone survivor here....me in the middle:)   Even the tree by the bench is gone.  
    Even thought I only knew my Grandma Lanphear for five short years I feel as though I did know her...we were close.  She played school with me as she had been a teacher for a few years in N. Dakota--the only place she could find emploment and where they sent her after she completed "Normal" school.  She also spoon fed me delicious Ohio Maple syrup and of course that's a sweet memory.:)  I have no memories of my Grandma Liebenauer because she was long gone by the time of my arrival.  But I heard many a story from my mom and my aunts and uncle.  I also found some of her letters to my mom when my mom was a live in baby sitter one summer near Detroit , Mi.  Her name was Clara and she grew up in the Detroit Mi. area.  Her family originated in Czechoslovakia.  My Dad's mom's name was Mary Elizabeth...to name me they combined the two names and I was named Mary Clare.  When I moved out to the Seattle area I became "Clare:.....All too often people , esp. teachers, would only call me Mary and I didn't like them dropping the Clare so I settled that and chose just Clare.  
     Memories are particularly intense around this time of year as my Dad died Dec. 15...my mom Oct. 25th and my Grandmother Lanphear on Thanksgiving of 1954...so bittersweet these times can be. It was good remembering them all today however as it caused me to look through some old photographs.  And to escape  some of the "holiday to do" list ha ha.  Many many more good memories about my mom and grandmothers but time to get to some more of the "to dos" .  Too la roo as some of the Kiwi blippers say:)
   Winter Song  and Canon in D