Not long after Josh and I celebrated our six-month anniversary, we got a call that changed our lives. My mom was in an accident and eleven days later, we lost the matriarch of my family. A little bit about my mother: Anne Claxton was a phenomenal woman. She loved to surround herself with “old stuff” and endless projects. She saw the potential in everything—whether it was a mistaken teenager or an empty 14,000 square-foot buggy manufacturing facility downtown. She lived the motto that “no task is too big”. You would often hear her tell my nephew, “If you stick with me, you’re going to know how to do something!”
While riding through town on the way to my grandparents’ house one Sunday afternoon, Mom fell in love with Barnesville. In 1989, my parents made the decision to move three toddlers from an Atlanta suburb to a one-stoplight town, an hour south of the city. Mom wanted us to grow up with a sense of community, in a safe environment surrounded by new friends who would soon become family. My parents have an enormous talent in restoring and refurbishing products, homes and businesses, including three houses and seven commercial buildings in Barnesville. Mom served on numerous civic committees and clubs and on the city council for sixteen years. Anne Claxton never fell out of love with Barnesville.
After the accident, she spent several days in ICU and later, a wonderful hospice center in Macon. During those two weeks, Josh and I spent most nights in Barnesville with family members and friends. For the first time since he moved to Georgia, Josh experienced the community surrounding us. We had the support of the entire town. I said many times during that horrible month, “If we still lived in Atlanta, we would just be a number.” We were not just a number in Barnesville.
It did not take long for us to decide to make the move back to my hometown—the town that Mom chose for her family and the town that we are choosing for our future family.
On Sept. 8, we officially purchased our first house together as a couple—it is a bit of a fixer upper, but the bones are great (that’s what people say to make the daunting renovation task easier, right?). Join us as we embark on this little (BIG) dream and transform a historic fixer upper into our dream home.
Let’s go make Anne Claxton proud.
