Their Family, 100 Years into the Future

One of my Kentucky cousins sent me this pic:

The location is Livermore (McClain County), a small river town on the Green River, a tributary of the Ohio, pronounced O-hi-a in those parts.

That's our Aunt Elsie (my grandmother's sister) as a toddler, 1916 or so. And that's our great grandmother, Bess Thomason. She was the family matriarch who raised four children. Elsie kept a picture of her in the foyer of her house, where I spent most Christmas's until her death in 2003. My grandmother looked just like her, as does one of my cousins (a contemporary of my mother's) who is just about the last person alive to remember Bess.

And so there were we last night, my cousin and I, a hundred years into the future, having a conversation about that photo. There's something existential about that.