One Sentence...

 

Cassius...now that is a name you don't hear too often any more.

Otto, Albertine, Beulah, Grover...Cleveland.....named for a past president?

All names from the past, my past, but a past made up of people I have never met or remember.

I had a lot of company last month. Family members came to visit several days and nearing at the end of the visit, a camera was brought out and pictures taken while members groaned and posed for family pictures. Which then lead to old photo albums being drug out and pictures  poured over like lost and newly found friends. One of my brother's kept finding pics and then would go over to show his kids and they would nonchalantly look at the pic and go back to watching tv or playing games. I really can't blame the kids, they wouldn't know or have a memory tied to the picture like their father did. Memories are tied up in pictures, or pictures tie up memories, either way they help to prod long forgotten moments, capture a time or place or a bit of history for each of us. The picture at the top of my blog is of either my great great grandparents or my great great great grandparents. I'm not sure, I can't remember what I was told, and it's on my list of things to do soon in finding out from my grandmother who they are again. She's the only one who knows, the only one who would be able to tell and remind me so that I can mark on the back of the copied print their names and possibly a date or place in that particular time of their lives.

I know some of you on my friend's list have been bitten by the ancestry bug and have been working for years on assembling information and tracing back your family trees. I admire you for taking that on, it's a daunting task trying to fit all the pieces together in your genetic make up. If you are lucky enough you have some old photos to help put a face to a name and can look for familiar similarities in family members. I have some family history written down. On my mom's dad's side, his mother's lineage has been traced back quite aways by another distant relative and there was even a book published back in the 1970's of their findings. Family trees keep growing though, and already the book is almost 40 years behind in additions that need to be made to each branch that keeps sprouting. It's never ending. I have the basics written down for just our particular branch and I need to dig my notes back out to add more information.

It's a heck of a lot of work, keeping track of history. With each passing decade it seems like the history gets smaller and smaller. I could write a lot about my mom, her mother, and a little about my great grandmother, but after that I just don't know much. I could name a few dates and names and look at my list and know just the barest of information about them. Great grandpa was a farmer, a truck driver, a barber,..he broke horses, he was rich and then poor and he always drove down the center of the road. Further back though, all that I have are listings of people with a date, and if they are lucky, one sentence. Such and such was a farmer, such and such was a school teacher. So and so had 10 kids, that person was sickly, died early. She was a spinster, he was a governor. It's kind of depressing when you think about it, a  whole life  summed up in just one sentence.

I got to looking at a particular picture that was taken around 1921. My grandmother was a senior in high school that year, and all of the family is either sitting or standing outside of a home posing for the picture. What always strikes me most when looking at old pictures is how nobody ever smiles much. I've heard it said that was because they had poor teeth back then, but I think it's more than that. Even the kids have the most somber of faces. I think it was such a hard life back then, they were just tired. Some faces stick out from the picture though. It's the eyes that stare back at you and you realize that each one of them had hopes and dreams and you wonder if their dreams were ever realized. My grandmother, at the top of her high school class dreamed of going to college, it's her biggest regret. At 17 she found herself married with a baby on the way like most girls her age. At times when I sit and listen to her talk I can see the years seem to drop from her face as it glows with a memory in her eyes as much as her smile. I think of future generations that won't know her, she will be just a date, and if she is lucky there will a notation or sentence after her name in someones memory book.

It made me start to think that we need a designated keeper of memories. Someone who writes down all the important stuff. Not just names, and occupations, and dates, and how many kids they had, but the good stuff. Stuff like dreams, and hopes and aspirations. Stuff that let us know the real person behind the picture. Let's face it, unless you were someone that achieved a lot of fame, we are all designated to be forgotten after a few generations til someone stumbles upon a picture or catches a bug to trace their family history. This blog isn't meant to be depressing or make anyone feel old and forgotten or that they didn't accomplish a whole heck of a lot in this lifetime. It's about how each of us has a sentence that sums up our whole lives, and it gives one a lot to ponder on just what our sentence will be and how we would want to be remembered.

At this point in my life I still don't know what my sentence is going to say or be. I can't really think of anything that sticks out of great importance. Maybe that is how it's all suppose to be. In our books of family, we are each a sentence that makes up the whole story. No sentence stands out much more than the other, they are all tied together in paragraphs and chapters and endless pages ... and if we are lucky, our storybooks will have pictures...

 

**(From top to bottom of the pictures of the ladies...my great great grandmother, my great grandmother, my grandmother, and my mom as a young child)...