Grandma in her Army Wife Days

1943???

This is my Grandma Ruth.  She was an Army wife too although for a shorter time.  But it wasn’t easy.  My grandparents got married and about 6 weeks later he went off to fight in World War 2. He didn’t get to come home for 3 years.  No R&R, no email, no Yahoo.  I just can’t even imagine what that would have been like.  On the back of this photo, there is a stamp that says “Passed by the Army Examiner”  So I can only guess she mailed him this photo while he was gone.

When I was about 13 years old she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 🙁  She passed away when I was 24.

When I was a little girl I asked Grandma how long she would live.  She told me she would live long enough to see me get married.  I feel like she kept that promise in a way even though she wasn’t physically at the wedding.  She died about 7 months after my wedding.  She also met my husband which was so important to me.  I have no idea if she even knew what was going on when he met her because by that point she really wasn’t there anymore at all.  A part of me believes she could have known deep down that this was the man that was going to marry her Granddaughter and she just couldn’t show any response because of the disease.

She would be turning 90 this year. There are so many things I want to talk to her about. So many questions about being an Army wife during that war that I will never be able to ask.