Circle of life
My mother-in-law passed away this morning at the age of 90. She was, as she put it “ready to go” a few years ago. She was at what they call “end of life” for a week, so it was a matter of time before she slipped away. She had 2 children, 3 grandchildren and 3.9 great grandchildren (the 4th is due a month today).
90 years is a long time. So many changes have happened during that time – cultural, political, social, and technological. Imagine what the world was like when you were born and try to project out 90 years.
She was born in 1923 in Cape Breton. In that year:
- William Lyon Mackenzie King was Prime Minister
- Calvin Coolidge became President after Warren Harding died unexpectedly
- Frederick Banting and Charles Best won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery of insulin
- Foster Hewitt announced his first ice hockey game.
- Prince Albert, Duke of York (later George VI) married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother)
- Charles Lindbergh made his first solo flight
- Archaeologist Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Tutankhamun
We’ll be heading to Halifax this week to retrieve her ashes and take her home to the farm she lived on.
