Julia is my paternal grandmother. This image shows her near the end of her life, when she suffered a stroke and subsequent paralysis from which she never recovered.
Julia had to endure a lot of suffering and pain in her life. She married in her early twenties, and she and my grandfather Michael were making a living in a tailoring business. She was, as we say here, very handy with the needle, and there were many examples of her crotchet and handiwork in my childhood home. My first ever coat, a red coat with a black velvet collar and buttons, was made by her.
She was widowed when her husband died in a drowning accident when he was about twenty six. At that stage my father, their only child, was still an infant. Family legend has it that she was pregnant with her second child when the tragedy happened, and that in the trauma of her grief she suffered a miscarriage. The young widow and infant son were then dependent on her father-in-law, also named Michael, who had retired from teaching. Life could not have been easy but they survived.
Many years later, when my father had finished his education and was launched on his own life she remarried. Unfortunately that marriage did not work out, and she buried her pride and came back to her home place to live in rented accommodation for the rest of her life.
My father, being her only child, was her pride and joy. He, from a solitary childhood where holidays with cousins provided the sibling experience he needed,was delighted to have had a family of six children, and his sense of family was very strong. We, his offspring, have no aunts or uncles on his side of our family, no first cousins either. As a result, some of our second cousins have become like first cousins to us.
Julia died when I was six. Her stroke deprived her of movement and of her speech. She would have only been a few years older than I am now.