I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know that my grandmother, The Wise and Wonderful Betty Gray, had a sister who died when they were children. That piece of information was just a fact for most of my life. A date on the family tree and a name.

After my grandfather died, Grandma told me about her father throwing himself into Jean’s grave, sobbing that he wanted his daughter back. Jean started to be a little more real to me then. So did my great grandfather. When Jean died of diptheria, she was 9, and my grandmother was six years old. Just a bit more than a year older than Ian is right this minute. She lived 93 years. She raised five children and had 10 grandchildren and three great grandchildren during her lifetime. Part of her never stopped being the six year old girl who saw her sister for the last time.

Now I’m a mom, and I’m seeing some of the family photographs from when my grandmother and her sisters were children for the first time. I certainly saw a lot of family photos when I visited Erie, but I’d never seen these. They add a whole other dimension to this story. Because my kids take after these madcap Lynch girls by quite a bit. I see expressions and attitudes in these photos taken 100 years ago and they are the same I see every day. The haircuts are different, the photo processes were different, but the minds and personalities behind those photos feel so FAMILIAR. In every sense of the word. And Jean and her two little sisters are becoming less abstract. I feel like I’m getting to know my Grandma and my Great Aunt Eileen more- not as they were when I knew them, but as they were before the loss of their sister changed everything.

I look at this face:

and I can’t help but see this:

You can learn more about the Lynch girls on my dad’s site. Start here.

Jenny and her girls (Jean and Betty):

Me and my boys: