Memories of Ione

 

Before Ione's funeral Anne asked Esther and myself about writing out our memories of Ione to be read at the funeral.

My mind was in a fog. Ione was gone and I had spent the last few days getting ready to go to North Texas town of Sherman for the funeral from San Antonio. Besides I am not like some people that have that gift of writing. Esther and I both wrote a note to Ione, heartfelt notes like we were speaking to her. We told her good bye, how much we loved her and we would miss her and tucked the notes in a organza bag and put it in her casket.

 

Later as we sometimes do, I started reflecting on the times we shared with Ione. One of the things that is prevalent between us three sisters is the devotion to family. We love our families and tried to connect the group of us as we are all scattered out. Including our aunts, cousins, our children, our children's children and on.
 

The Computer 

Another thing is we all thought if one of us got something we thought all 3 needed to have it. One of those things was the computer. We got them about 1989. Goodness they were a WHOLE lot different then than now. One of us got the idea we would keep the families connected by having people send us news about their families once a month by snail mail and we would take turns writing a newsletter to snail mail it out to any family member that wanted one. We didn't have email then that we knew of. It grew and we had a nice thing going. We still have the copies. We had news about the family, we had a message center where people could leave questions and get answers. We had inspirations and jokes. I remember on one newsletter I think it was Velma that sent in a message to ask if somebody had a pattern and she gave the pattern number. After a few years readership kind of fell off and not as many people sending in news so we gave it up.

 

Then came the faxes.

 Phone calls were "long distance" and cost money and as much as we talked we had to find a way to communicate some way. Esther lived in Tom Bean, Ione lived in Cedar Hill and I lived in San Antonio. All long distance. I can't remember how we got the idea but we each bought a fax. Leland knew that he was going to have to buy one since Ione and I had one. His remark was "how much is this going to cost me." This is how we did it. Since we always felt we had so much to tell each other we typed it out on paper and then when we were ready to send it we called that sister and told them to turn on their fax. We had to do that because Esther & Ione's were hooked up to their phone line. I had a fax and fax line at work so they could just send it to me without calling unless I was home. Yes, I had one there too. We did that until the next technology came along.

 

Cell phones or emails

I don't remember which of these were first. Probably email. When we discovered it was a good thing because now we could drop the hassle of the faxes. However the faxes did it's job.

With email we could write whenever and however long. This was better than the newsletters and faxes. Now if somebody sent us something we wanted the other one to know we could just forward it. Or send out to multiple people. At no cost! We were up town now!

 

Cell phones

We all got one of those too. At first we had limited minutes we had to pay attention to as much as talked and then came the unlimited minutes. Now we could talk "on the go." We could catch up with each other no matter where we were.

The Family Blog
Now we have our own family blog. It has a lot of stuff on there about 360 + posts. Everybody in all three of our families are on there.  There is a little bit of everything. Just like it used to be when we were doling out newsletters except this is much better. We have a readership of people from around the world. Sure not like the snail mail. We have pictures, funny stories, all kind of things. The families have grown a lot since the late eighties and early nineties. Yep, we have come a long way.
And we have a lot to tell.

 

The Pendant

 

I started making some pendants for family members. I made four just alike before the funeral, Anne had already gotten hers. I also remembered while I was making them that Ione, Esther and I always got what the other one got. So I made Ione one as well. Anne, Esther and I wore ours to the funeral. Ione's was tucked into the organza bag with the notes. She would have smiled because she got one too.