Her third child Callie, who later became my own mother, was only two years old when this happened. Death came first for the baby, and when she woke briefly from the anesthesia, she saw it coming for her.

It was that very weekend that she took so suddenly sick In the long quiet days afterward, Michael wrote about it in his journal: the sudden fever the seizure the race to the hospital by horse-drawn ambulance the surgery to save both mother and baby, for she was six months pregnant with their fifth child.

In a note to him on the eve of the couple’s seventh anniversary she wrote, “Our town has been rather gay and flighty this week: we had a Temperance lecture!” She signed every note to her groom, “I am, with love, your Carrie.” “Thanks for the account of our wedding as it appeared in the Springfield Republican (but now I fear Irish point lace is cheap, is it not?)” “While the groom is dressing up, I’ll say a few words,” she wrote home during that journey. I know that as a bride she wore a gown of white silk, trimmed with Irish point lace, and that she and Michael traveled to the church “in carriages,” lingered briefly for an informal reception, then “took the cars” - meaning traveled by rail - to begin their wedding journey. But she left enough behind so I know some things about her anyway: We missed each other by almost half a century, Carrie Maloney and I. She almost certainly didn’t think she would be mother to someone who would be mother to me, here in this age of instant communication. Her eyes were that bright blue, even in the old photos, her jawline both strong and delicate.Īll my life I have studied those photos wondering if she sensed ever what lay ahead for her: the babies coming so quickly, four in six years, and then the fast approaching darkness.

A hundred years ago this week she married her young man Michael.

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