I was thinking today about the MISSING LINK which in most families is our relationship with our great grandparents. We never knew most of them but may have heard ABOUT them from our grandparents. Unless someone writes down their information, it doesn't get passed down to our children and grandchildren. Will our great grandchildren know anything about us IF we don't leave a record, a HISTORY of our life either captured in a journal or compiled in a life story or scrapbook? (Photo of my mom and me above.)
It's not too late to start compiling a record of your life's experiences. What have you learned that you'd like to tell your posterity? Words of wisdom that can help them along their paths. I know some phrases that have guided me in my life came from a grandmother's wise words...if life gives you lemons make lemonade and this too shall pass. During my life and trials that have come, those words have sustained me as well as knowing the love my grandmother continues to have for me. (Photo above standing me and my mom, seated my grandmother holding my first son Frank-her great grandson. Unfortunately, she died soon after his birth but I've written her life story to pass to her great and 2nd great grandchildren.)
Death is just a passageway and we who remain behind for now are RESPONSIBLE to connect the missing links as we learn more about our ancestor's lives and pass that knowledge on to our posterity. For that is why I do family history research, collect old photos and write my ancestor's stories to ...turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers.. (Malachi 4:6) So they are not forgotten by us. (Photo of me above as a grandmother holding my first grandchildren twins Heather and Emilee.)
I know almost nothing about my great grandparents. John Frost Hubbard is my mother's Grandpa's name one her mother's side. I know a little about him and his second wife...who we called "Aunt Ruby" I knew Aunt Ruby well. I spent quite a bit of time with her until my late teens. I loved her. I would have loved her even more if she hadn't always been saying mean things about my grandmother.
ReplyDeleteAnyway... The point here is that your post resonated with me. I know bits and pieces about that generation and would love to know so much more.
I think the suggestion to write our own history so that those who come after us will know something of their heritage is extremely wise. That's something I think I'll make a goal of mine. I'll include stories about my parents and grandparents... my own children... It'll be fun.
Another thoughtful post, Lin!
You are so right, of course. My grandmother wrote a book that my mother is passing down to the next generation. The nice thing is my nephew married a girl from Japan who can actually read it. I know I should spend the time to translate it (with my mother's help) for our kids, too.
ReplyDeleteLin, Good post. With this one, almost you persuade me to take up the hat of historian more earnestly. Perhaps because I don't have children to pass it along to, I haven't paid that much attention about being the one to be the torch bearer of our past. But as I get older, I am really appreciating the connection to the past.
ReplyDeleteWe had a large family reunion on my dad's side last summer. And it was very inspiring to learn more about our great-grandparents and my grandmother when she was a young girl.
So thanks Lin!
So true! My great-grandfather kept a pocket diary in his last years in which he wrote down all kinds of odds and ends--birthdays, appointments to have the furnace cleaned, visits from relatives, what he had for dinnerm who cut his hair, what he read in the paper. I typed it up on my Gram's manual typewriter when I was a kid. He kept his mind sharp AND he left a record of family life.
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