Grandma's Obituary

I wanted to share my grandma's obituary here on my blog, both as a way to archive it for myself, and as a way to share it with anyone who may not have been able to make it to her funeral. If you missed my previous post about Grandma I will link that for you HERE. I wrote that the day after she died, and it was significantly harder to get through than this one. I actually haven't gone back to read it since then.

Also, while he was home for the funeral, my brother Jared went over to grandma's to take some pictures before everything inevitably changes over there.

Four Generations
Jared, our dad, Jared's son Jackson, & Grandma.

I'm including a couple of his pictures in this post, but if you're interested in seeing them all, I'll link you to his album on Facebook HERE. Not sure what his privacy settings are set to, but hopefully at least family and friends will be able to see them. Those pictures got to me almost as badly as writing my original blog post.

Grandma's obituary was written by my cousin Sarah, who took care of my grandma just about every day in her final years, and got her to share many of her stories from her years back in Canada. Sarah probably got to know my grandma the best of all her grandchildren, and was the perfect choice to write the obituary.

Sarah also shared a bunch of pictures with me, to use in this post, so the obituary will be a more illustrated version than the one in the funeral program.

Also, just to be a completist, before I get to the obituary itself, I wanted to include the inside of the program as well.

Marion North

1926-2018

Marion (Carleton) North was born November 14, 1926, to Clayton Carleton and Lillian (Dawkins) Carleton. She was raised on a farm in the tiny town of Orkney, Saskatchewan, during the Great Depression, living without electricity and hauling water, tending and butchering chickens for the family, shooting prairie dogs for the money by the tail, and attending a little schoolhouse by foot, or horse and cart, with her siblings.

It was at this school that she met her friend, Rose Marie, with whom she would have a friendship spanning over eighty years. Marion loved to ride her horse "Babe" across the prairie to break up the loneliness of living in Orkney, and would ride for miles in order to visit Rose.

Her paternal grandparents homesteaded near their family farm, and Marion would walk down to visit her Grandpa Charles, whom she called her "boyfriend".

They would eat apples and read each others letter's. Marion had pen pals early on, including a couple of young ladies from England. Her dedication to letter writing would shape her life, and others, for decades to come.

When she was 16, her future husband was hired on, as a farm worker during WW2. She kept in touch over thousands of miles between their home towns, writing letters by the light of a coal oil lamp, seeing him only during harvest season, for years.

 

Then on July 3, 1946, Marion Carleton, and Roy North, were married in Malta, Montana. She traveled, by train, with him to live in Ontario, where she was treated to many luxuries; like running water, and bread delivered to their door. In 1950, they moved to Transcona, Manitoba, and started a mushroom farm.

At this operation she was in charge of payroll and bookkeeping. In 1951 their first child, William, was born, and would be followed by five more children: John, Daniel, David, Andrew, and at last, her beloved daughter, Ruth. In 1971, the family moved to Spencer, Iowa, and then to Harlan, Iowa, in 1976.  

It was as a young married couple that Roy and Marion would profess Christ as their Savior. She would go on to teach Sunday School, do charitable work with other Christian ladies, and happily show much hospitality to preachers, missionaries, friends, and family. She loved to cook and bake for others, embroider, collect china, and cactus.

She was very faithful writing letters and sending cards. She kept written records of birthdays, anniversaries, addresses, and when she sent responses to letters. Through shaky handwriting, and memory struggles, she still made efforts in later years to write and call others, to keep in touch, and be an encouragement.

On October 7, 2018, her gentle spirit was taken from her home into the presence of her Savior, having attained the age of 91 years, 10 months, and 23 days.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Roy, brothers; Stanley (Lois) Carleton, Kenneth (Jean) Carleton; and her sister Mae (Thomas) Woods. She is survived by her children; William (Linda) North of Wheaton, Illinois; John (Cindy) North of Harlan; Daniel North of Harlan; David North of Harlan; Andrew (Sherri) North of Harlan; Ruth (Nathan) Klindt of Granby, Colorado; 11 grandchildren; 4 great-grandchildren; brother, George (Sophie) Carleton, of British Columbia, Canada; other family members, and friends.

Thanks to everyone who came to grandma's funeral, or sent their support. It meant a lot to everyone, and thanks again to Jared and Sarah for the pictures. They mean so much now, and will mean so much to us all in the future.

Grandpa Bell

As most of you know, my Grandpa Bell died last month. Sadly it was the same day as Jacob's wedding. We found out as we left the reception. I didn't want to mention that in the post about the wedding, but thought I should mention it here. We knew it was coming, but it was still a shock.

As funerals tend to do, we had a ton of family brought together that week. I took a bunch of pictures before and after the funeral, so I wanted to share them here. Before I do that though, I did want to share a couple of the pictures I took at Grandpa's 90th birthday party last year. All his kids made it down for that special occasion, and we had to photograph it. This was my best picture from the day.

My other favorite picture I took that day was this one. There were a bunch of really old photos on a table at the party and I decided to arrange and photograph them. I'm really glad I did.

We miss you grandpa.

The whole weekend of the funeral, my nephew Jackson was the center of attention.

Dad is obsessed with Jackson the most, and of course gets first dibs as grandpa, but Mandi loves all babies and had to be persuaded to relinquish him. :)

We spent a lot of time at Uncle John and Aunt Becky's house that weekend. It's a great place for big family gatherings.

I swear I didn't put an Instagram filter on this picture, it just turned out this way!

Jared had a story to tell and Afton was a captive audience.

The funeral home was decorated so nicely. Lots of amazing pictures from the past.

That big one was taken by my cousin Kim. It's one of the best pictures any of us had of him.

It's one of my favorites. It's just the perfect picture of him.

I didn't get any more pictures here after this because I just feel weird about taking pictures at funerals. Plus I was a pallbearer and had to focus on that. I'm glad that Mandi was there because she stepped up and took some great pictures that day.

I don't think anyone likes funerals, but grandpa's was really nice, and a fitting tribute to him. I'm really glad I was a part of it.

After the funeral all the pallbearers were given a shell from the guns that were fired at the ceremony. I put mine on my bookshelf, next to a couple of diamonds from Jacob's wedding.

After the funeral we had a picnic in a park, though I didn't get any pictures there either, because it was a lot of people I didn't know and the few I did were too scattered.

After that, the family all headed back to Aunt Becky and Uncle John's.

Sometime later, an ice cream truck came by for some reason, while a bunch of people were outside, and Uncle John bought everyone ice cream!

The rest of these pictures were probably taken the next day. We went back to Uncle John and Aunt Becky's after church on Sunday.

I loved this picture of Grandma and Maggie. :)

Then Jackson was back to being the center of attention.

That's all I've got. It was an emotional weekend, but really nice too.

Vintage Photographs #2

You probably recall awhile back when I posted about learning how to restore photos for my digital photography class, and then using what I’d learned to restore some pictures for my grandma. I posted the before and after versions which you can find HERE if you’d like to see them again. You might also recall that I mentioned I was working on some more to use in a Christmas gift for her.

Well, I finished the last 6 that she had given me when I started the photo restoration assignment for school. I put them all into an album which I gave to her for Christmas. She really liked it and I told her I would do some more and have them printed and keep adding to her album. And of course, I will share my progress here as well, so here are the most recent pictures for my grandma’s album.

That is my Grandma on the right. That may be her mother in the middle, but I’m not sure who the little girl is. You can’t really tell with these pictures, but there were little cracks and scratches, and tiny little pieces missing from the original. The online version is too small for those imperfections to be very noticeable.

  

This is a picture of my Grandma and Grandpa.

  

I do not know who these two women are.

  

My Grandma.

  

I don’t know who this woman is. And again, most of what was wrong with this photo you can see at this size on the internet, with the exception of that crusty spot over her fingers.

This is a picture of my Grandma’s mom, and those are her two older brothers. There was some writing on the back from her mother who had sent this picture to a friend some time in the distant past. She wrote to her friend, “Don’t look at me.” Which I found to be hilarious. :D

Grandma recently gave me an envelope with more pictures that she would like to have restored, so when I get the chance, I will be working on them. But, school starts again tomorrow already, so I’m not sure when I‘ll have a whole lot of free time. When I finish some of them I will post them for you all to see.

Vintage Photographs: Before & After

I’ve been working on a bunch of pictures for my grandma in my spare time this week. It takes a long time and a lot of work, but it it so much fun! I already shared the first one I did for a class assignment, but I’ve done a few more since then, so I thought I’d make a new post so you could see what I’ve been doing.

These first two weren't too much work. I got them done just today, in less than an hour each. The little girl is my grandma, and I believe those are her brothers. At least two of them are. Ken and Stanley. I’m not sure if the other one is or not. I was thinking she only had two brothers. Maybe the other is a cousin or a friend.

Anyway, here is the before:

And here is the after:

The next picture is of my grandma and grandpa when they were MUCH younger.

Before:

After:

The next 4 I’ve been working on all week. They were significantly damaged, and have taken a LONG time to repair.

This is my grandma with a friend of hers. The back of the picture names her Rose Marie McCullay. Grandma is on the left making ice cream, and her friend is on the right. If you look closely, you can see that Rose is holding a cat. I didn’t even notice that until I’d scanned the picture into the computer and blown it up huge.

Here it is after I’d fixed it. The sky still looks a little odd, but I decided not to fix it further because I thought it looked sort of like clouds, and it made the picture more interesting.

The next one is a picture of my grandma with another friend, but I can’t read much of what the back says, so I’m not sure of her name. Grandma is on the right.

Here is the finished version. And again, after I’d scanned it, I noticed a cat. Can you find it? :)

The next one is another picture of my Grandma and a friend, but she is not named. She looks similar to Rose from the earlier picture, so it could be her again.

It struck me how much my Aunt Ruth looks like grandma in this picture.

Here is the fixed version.

Other than the very first one that I chose for my school assignment, this last one has been the most challenging. Not only was it damaged, but it was over exposed, and was taken through a window causing multiple ugly reflections to obscure the image.

I really had my doubts as to whether or not I would be able to fix that but I did!

This is grandma as a little girl along with her brothers Ken and Stanley.

I still have a bunch more to work on, so I‘ll be doing another post like this soon!