[jdviole2]

Lets talk about holding grudges. Though I always thought of her as perfect, I must reluctantly admit that Helena did have a few faults. One was that she could hold a grudge. I only saw this a couple of times but believe me it wasn't pretty. She could forgive you for almost anything, lord knows she forgave me a lot, but she did have limits. I can give you one example of how long she could hold the grudge. There was a television star that she really liked when she was little. I'm not going to tell you who it was, but he was the star of one of the most popular shows of the time. This would have been in the 1959 or 1960 so she would have been 8 or 9. Helena was thrilled to learn that he was going to be the grand marshal of a major local parade in her hometown. The family got there very early so Helena could get in the front row of people lining the parade route. She waited and finally his car came into view. He was waving at the crowd and they were all waving back. Periodically the car would stop for a few moments the move again. The car stopped right in front of where Helena was standing. She ran up to the car to see him. He NEVER looked down. He totally ignored her. She was crushed. This is one of the childhood stories she made sure to tell me. So flash forward 14 years. I heard on the radio that this "major" star had died. When I got home I made sure this was the first thing I told Helena about my day. She only had one word to say about it, "good". I told her that was pretty harsh and she informed me that she couldn't feel sorry for someone who would treat a little girl that badly. I don't know what the criteria were to get on her list but thankfully I never did anything that bad. So for todays pictures. The first one is Helena getting a room ready for painting about 1990. They say you should never do a major project like paint a house with your spouse. We did it three times and never had a bad experience. Helena was a major Marilyn Monroe fan. So on our first trip to California in 77 or 78 she had to visit Manns Chinese theater to put her hands in Marilyn's prints. (They were a great match) The third photo is taken in 1981 at Colorado National Monument. She is holding her SLR camera. In the next photo she is helping out the environment by holding up a rock ledge in the badlands in South Dakota. Probably around 1994. In the last picture she has gotten something on her hands, something sticky as I remember. Please note the look on her face. I can't tell you how many times I saw that same look. (In fact I have a picture of her taken when she was about 2 years old where she has exactly the same expression) About two weeks before she passed away I said something to her and she flashed that exact same look at me. Its a little hard for me to look at it right now. Enjoy.