Emma Braun Ganzer

12:59:00 PM judyo53 0 Comments

B-July 13, 1900 D-November 7, 1973

Emma Braun Ganzer was my Grandmother, which makes her your Great Great Grandmother. She was the mother of my mother (your Grandma Bea). She married Daniel Ganzer. They lived in Blue Island.

I have a great old picture of Grandma and her family. The photo to the right must have been taken on the same day. I believe she had 4 sisters and one brother. I don't think I ever met her brother and I think he died young - in his teens or 20's maybe? Her sister Frieda is the aunt of mine that lived to be 105. Frieda was the youngest of the Braun clan.

Many people called Emma "Emmy." That's what my Grampa called her. She was a small lady and was as sweet as could be. Since my Mom was her only child, we were very close to Gram & Gramp Ganzer. We would eat dinner at their house almost every Sunday.

Towards the end of her life (I think she was in her early 70's when she died), she was constantly getting operated on and losing unneeded body parts. In fact, at one point in time there was a jar in our toy box at their house. In the jar were Gramma Emmy's kidney stones (probably gallbladder stones as they were pretty big - but we called them her kidney stones). Why they were in our toy box is beyond me. Since I was older I'd always remember to get to that toy box first so I could be the one chasing Johnny around with that jar of "kidney stones" instead of being chased by Johnny with them. I don't know what the deal was - I guess the fear of the chaser opening the jar and dumping those stones on the chasee. Gross!

As religious and sweet as Grandma was, it was always fun hearing her swear the few times she did. She would always say she got her hairs cut. I would correct her, "You got a hair cut." She said, "No, I got them all cut!"

Gramma Emmy wore false teeth since I can remember. The few times she would come over to our house and babysit we would ask her to perform her "trick." She would take her false teeth out, take a glob of Vicks VapoRub out of the jar, roll it in a ball, coat it with sugar and swallow it! I have no idea where that started, maybe one of us was sick and didn't want Vicks rubbed on our chest (something they used to do back then when kids had colds).

Back to Granda Emmy's operations, I felt she was suffering and as much as I loved her I knew she was going to go soon. In fact, for some reason when the phone rang this one day I knew it was the news that she was gone and I was right. Spooky!

I let her go because of her suffering but she haunted me for many years after. I would have very vivid dreams that she was still alive and I'd wake up all happy and then reality would set in that she was gone - long gone. I really missed that wonderful, happy little lady all these years.