GAR...

...was what all her grandchildren called my grandmother, born in 1887. This photo was probably taken by a street photographer in Weymouth in about 1933 and the little boy was my father. It was around the time that she was widowed and given one month to move the family out of their army married quarter leaving her homeless and broke. She was about 45 and had had ten children, two of whom died in their first year. Dad was the youngest.
Gar was Spanish - named Maria del Carmen but known as Carrie in England - and had met my granddad in Gibraltar while she was a housekeeper or companion in the household of some British official. When granddad died in the middle of the Great Depression, without any security she somehow managed to persuade the bank to give her a mortgage on a house in Weymouth and she took in lodgers and summer visitors. I think that determination shows in this photo.
During the War she was accused of being unpatriotic by a vicar who found her - a suspicious foreigner - putting flowers she'd picked on the graves of two German airmen who'd crashed nearby. She told him that two of her sons were fighting overseas and if anything happened to them she hoped that another mother would care enough to put flowers on their graves. When she died at 81 (still with waist-length black hair) we found a collection of beautiful poems and love letters to granddad that she'd written through the years since his death - in English and Spanish. My aunties insisted that they were buried with her, which was probably right although, aged 17 at the time, I wanted to keep them.

I've been experimenting with Photoshop layers and blends today. The background is some faded roses I'm about to throw away. Gar loved roses, grew them, had them in the house and loved rose printed fabrics, and they always remind me of her, especially red and pink ones..

Inspired by meancoast's History Week.