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I was about six when my grandfather was dying of lung cancer. He worked as an engineer and his train run was between Birmingham and Atlanta. He was a heavy smoker, and for anybody who ever visited Birmingham in the fifties you could smell the coke and iron mills belching out smoke from twenty miles away. They lived right by the green water tower on interstate 65 in north Birmingham. The house my mother was born in was demolished for interstate 65 and during my grandfather's illness my brother and I lived in my aunt's house with my cousins for two weeks as my mother helped care for her father.
My uncle passed two years ago and he married my aunt at 17 and she was 18. High school sweethearts. She never worked and raised her three girls and was active in the church. She is about ninety now and lives in this great nursing home in Hoover which is top of the line, and the daughters visit their mother regularly. This will probably be the last time I see my cousins and aunt. My oldest cousin worked for Bell South and became upper management in her forty year career where she started as an operator. It was her husband who died of endocrine cancer. It was horrible. they took a camera you swallow, and it never came out.....his tumors had closed his small intestines, and he had a horrible last three months. So horrible that when I try to talk to her about what is coming as I share the same cancer, she simply cries and I have to change the subject.
The family home is gone. My mother's grade school has been demolished, and the congregation at the baptist church reflected the changing neighborhood as once the interstate destroyed the core of the Acipco neighborhood, most of the people moved south of Birmingham to a place called lay lake. My Aunt's house was sold, and now all my connections with Birmingham are all but gone except three cousins and my aunt. Everybody is dead. She will not be buried in the family plot because my uncle did not like being toe to toe and was buried in another place. So I will say my goodbyes to a special place which was full of history and excitement as a kid.
My uncle passed two years ago and he married my aunt at 17 and she was 18. High school sweethearts. She never worked and raised her three girls and was active in the church. She is about ninety now and lives in this great nursing home in Hoover which is top of the line, and the daughters visit their mother regularly. This will probably be the last time I see my cousins and aunt. My oldest cousin worked for Bell South and became upper management in her forty year career where she started as an operator. It was her husband who died of endocrine cancer. It was horrible. they took a camera you swallow, and it never came out.....his tumors had closed his small intestines, and he had a horrible last three months. So horrible that when I try to talk to her about what is coming as I share the same cancer, she simply cries and I have to change the subject.
The family home is gone. My mother's grade school has been demolished, and the congregation at the baptist church reflected the changing neighborhood as once the interstate destroyed the core of the Acipco neighborhood, most of the people moved south of Birmingham to a place called lay lake. My Aunt's house was sold, and now all my connections with Birmingham are all but gone except three cousins and my aunt. Everybody is dead. She will not be buried in the family plot because my uncle did not like being toe to toe and was buried in another place. So I will say my goodbyes to a special place which was full of history and excitement as a kid.
