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Scapbooking
By Bernadine Sevy
Sophie in America
We had a visit from my aunt this year, she spent 6 months visiting my
mother, her sister, in Idaho. My sister, Belinda, and I decided to create
a scrapbook for her of her visit here.
In South Africa, we don’t have a lot of the things that are common
place in the U.S.A. and so we captured her reactions to common day things
as well as the spectacular. Her first snowfall filled her with delight and
the wonderment on her face is so charming, a trip to Yellowstone, in
winter, shows 5 foot snowdrifts and then there are sweet photos of her
having a tea party with her great-nieces and nephews, photos of her and
her sister. I created a family tree so that she’d be able to keep
straight who belonged to whom and we journaled in depth, so that as time
went on she’d have all the details fresh in her memory.
We didn’t realize that what we were doing would be so very important.
3 days before she was to return to South Africa, Belinda’s husband,
James (he’s a physician) diagnosed Aunty Sophie with cancer and a very
advanced case of it too. We were all shocked and my mother was especially
devastated. Aunty Sophie decided to return to South Africa, as planned, so
that if her disease did not respond to the chemotherapy and radiation, she’d
be able to spend, what time she had left, with her grandchildren and
great-grandsons. We made 2 copies of the scrapbook, presenting one to my
mother, and gave the original to Aunty Sophie, I kept the 2nd
copy for my children. If Aunty Sophie doesn’t make it through her
disease, we are also comforted by the fact that her great-grandchildren
have a record of her last few well months and a lot of photos of their
Ouma-grootjie, since it is so expensive in South Africa, photos are a
luxury.
We love the "Sophie in America" scrapbook and I am so glad
that we took the time to create it, it has comforted us all in many ways.
Here are some example pages from Sophie's scrapbook, click on a page to
enlarge:
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