Auntie Susie (Tocher) and my mother's mother, Annie Tocher, c. 1900. Probably taken in Edinburgh. My great grandmother raised her children alone after leaving my great grandfather. He was a pharmacist who "sampled the wares" and was "unsteady" (a euphemism for an alcoholic). The fact that my great great grandfather was a "spirits" merchant and that he worked for him before marrying my great grandmother might have contributed to the "unsteadiness". He died in an asylum of "softening of the brain," I recently discovered. No doubt a result of years of dissipation. View full size.

Auntie Susie was a very talented artist and I have a few of her pieces, though my birth-father sold a number of them before I was born. She and my grandmother, Annie (who I was named after, though she preferred to be called Nancy) both died of cancer.