What Was Important to Mom: The Last Roll of Film

 

(An out of town trip waylaid continuing to write Jane's story so I have not completed the next post in the series. I'll be back to that next week, promise. In the meantime, here's another post I had ready to go.)

 

My mom—Ann Margaret Kozlina Gilbride—has been gone since 2010, but I got a glimpse into her life recently: I developed the last roll of film discovered in her 35mm camera.

There was nothing really earth-shattering in the photos. Still, they spoke of my mom in subtle ways. And there were a few connections that I made to my current life.

I wish I knew the exact years the images were taken, but I can only estimate. It turns out the date stamp was incorrectly set, so all the photos are stamped with '94. I'm guessing that the photos were taken between October when Mom had her birthday, and June or July of the following year. Other clues in the images tell me they were likely taken about 2005-2006, give or take a year. 

There are no people in any of the photos. Mom photographed the gifts she received for her birthday and for Christmas, arranged on her dining room table or an end table in her living room. While I don't know who Mom would have shared these images with, I think it was her way of capturing those times others thought of her on her special days. 

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The first images are of cut and potted flowers she received for her birthday that year, and a copy of Jane Austen's book Sense & Sensibility. Mom loved flowers, and my brothers and I liked to give them to her. Not sure who the roses were from, but the potted flowers were from my brother, sister-in-law, and niece. Mom also loved any movie adaptation of Jane Austen's works—especially Pride & Prejudice. I wonder if she ever saw any version of Sense & Sensibility. I'm sure she would have loved the Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet version.

One photo shows a stuffed Ziggy and a scarecrow doll on her rocking chair, also likely birthday gifts. Mom loved and collected Ziggy stuffies when they were popular. She also really liked fall. We were both October babies and shared an affinity for autumn and its coziness. 

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Mom's love of Christmas was legendary and in her younger days she decked out the house in all sorts of holiday cheer. As she and all the family grew older, there wasn't much need to create all that magic in the house. Six photos celebrate a few treasured Christmas decorations that year. 

A small Christmas tree was topped by a brown-haired doll decked out in leopard print. Mom made this ornament from leftover scraps of fabric she had used decades earlier to make me and my sister Sharon matching pajamas for Christmas. She made me a matching ornament doll with yellow yarn hair, my sister's had brown hair. Not far away on the tree was a brown-haired angel ornament, one of many she collected after my sister died. A couple other photos show pink tulips, a container of cookies or candy, and a snowman on a sled with a penguin and dog. It played "Jingle Bells" if I recall correctly and the snowman bobbed about as the music played.

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Six photos document red and pink tulips she received for the following Valentine's Day. Fortunately, one of the images was crisp enough that when I zoomed in I could see that we had sent them to her:

Mom & Memaw

Hope you have a wonderful Valentine's

Day. We love and miss you! Enjoy the 

flowers.

Love, Nancy, Jim, Annie & James 

Mom kept taking photos of those tulips over the course of a couple of days. I especially love the one that she probably thought didn't turn out very well. It seems the flash did not go off, and the image is darker than the rest. I love it though, as you can see the snow on the ground outside looking past the slatted blinds, and the composition is really nice.

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When my brother sent me the camera, I had to "waste" the last few photos on the film roll to finish it, so I just snapped anything around. When I first saw the developed photos, I thought I had taken the last two that show a fawn resting in a backyard. Such a photo will look very familiar to anyone who has seen the number of deer photos I post on Facebook, as we have many deer families in our Texas neighborhood.

Fawn resting in Mom's backyard.

Mom's photo shows the backyard of our Blissfield Dr. home in Willowick. I lived at that house from 1970-1988 and never once did I see a deer in the backyard. Maybe they stayed away because there were just too many people. Or maybe their numbers grew in Ohio, and they had to move into the suburbs to find food and habitat. But at some point after I left Willowick, the deer began to make an appearance in Mom's yard. She was always so happy to have them nearby. Her property was on a cul-de-sac and backed onto deep wooded yards on the street behind—perfect habitat for wandering deer.

I recall the thrill I felt—and still feel—when mama deer bring their fawns to our yard in Texas and leave them while they go to forage. It's happened for a few years in a row now. I've been told that they do this because the mamas know their babies will be safe here or that the mamas return to where they were born. My husband dubbed it "Bambi-sitting." It seems like such a privilege to be trusted.

Fawns resting in my Texas backyard last summer. (Photo by author)

I love that Mom had that same experience. I had seen earlier photos of her fawn visitors, so these show that the deer continued to come back to Mom's yard—just like they do for me. It's lovely to realize so long after she died that we have that in common. 

I probably won't have many more opportunities to discover something new about Mom, and I'm grateful to see what she thought was important enough to capture on film.

Until next time...

 

IMAGES 

All photos by Ann M. Gilbride unless otherwise noted.