IN LOVING MEMORY OF MICHAEL & ELIZA ENNIS and MALCOLM & MARY BEST
  By Mary Anne Ennis

Looking back on my childhood, I realize how fortunate I was to have two sets of parents, and I'm pretty amazed at how it all came about. I know bits and pieces of what happened from the few things my mom and dad or my aunt and uncle told me, but the rest I learned later from my brothers, sisters and relatives. Still there are details that I will never know because no one remembers them. So this is my story of how I came to live with and be raised by my aunt and uncle.

I was born to Michael and Eliza Ennis, the youngest of ten children, of whom seven were living and three (triplets) who died at birth or shortly after. My mother who was ill with tuberculous had to be hospitalized two months before I was born. After my birth she had to remain in hospital, and due to an outbreak of measles at that time, I had to remain there as well. I was seven months old when I could finally go home.

In the meantime, at home my father had his hands full with six children. My four brothers and two sisters ranged in age from one to fifteen kept him and our grandmothers very busy. When the time came for me to be released from hospital, my dad decided to ask his sister, Mary for help. So because the youngest of her three children was thirteen, she and her husband Mack Best, agreed to help out.
They took me home with them until my mother could be released from hospital. Well, it was almost two years by the time my mom was ready to come home, because she had to have a serious operation, and back then you had to be hospitalized a long time for tuberculosis. When she did come home, she really wasn't strong enough to care for a two year old but she decided to try anyway because she felt it was time for me to come home to my real family.

Well, obviously it wasn't going to be as easy as everyone thought. My aunt (“Mom“ as I called her) and uncle (Uncle Mack) prepared me for my return home. He set out to walk the distance between our homes with me bundled up in his arms. “Mom” couldn't even watch us leave, soft-hearted person that she was. It made them both sad having to return me to my parents, especially since they'd had plenty of time to become attached to me. When Uncle Mack brought me into my parents’ house, I apparently put up a struggle to stay with him. He left me there anyway, and he kept going back every night to listen under my window to see if I was crying. Well, I must have been because it got so bad, between my crying and my uncle's concern, that my parents decided for everyone's sake, to let me go back to the home I knew. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been, and how emotional it was for everyone. They'd all experienced losing children.

Well, things calmed down after I went back home with ‘Mom’ and Uncle Mack. They raised me as if I were one of their own and I was happy (which was all that mattered). Their three children were like another two brothers and sister to me, and now I had two families. We all saw each other on a regular basis, even though we didn't live that close to each other. Being the youngest of all the children in both families, I think I got lots of attention. My grandmother and my uncle's brother also lived with us and so I'm sure, with so many people in each home there was never a dull moment.

As the years pass and I reminisce, I realize how much I miss my childhood, and growing up in Merasheen. I have a lot of great memories though. All my parents are gone now, and I miss them a lot and think about them often. I'll never forget the sacrifices they made for me and how wonderful it was to have them as parents.