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Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 07, 2019

Something About Being Connected

I have this weird feeling all the time of being slightly disconnected from the rest of the world. Probably because I don't have children. I don't know, but recently I've been digging into the family roots. I've talked about this before and about how tough it can be to track your genealogy when you keep running into a slavery wall. Thankfully,  I have some older relatives who can fill me in on certain things.

I just got copies of some old obits in the mail from a dear aunt. Just seeing the names and information about people who belong to me (or I to them) moved me to tears.


I turned 7 the year she died

For many, many years I've had this memory that I wasn't sure was real. I was telling my aunt that I very clearly remember meeting these two old ladies and had always wondered if one was my great granny. She said that I would have been no more than 7 when Granny Rosie died. I have no idea why this memory remains so vivid, but when I described it to my aunt, she confirmed every detail.

During one of our family visits back to Arkansas, my father, mother, and I (not sure if any of my siblings were with us), drove out to "the country". We went to this really small house that was set back against some woods. These two old ladies were out front like they had been expecting us and they were excited and happy to see us. We stood in the front yard for a while, while they hugged and kissed my parents and inspected me. Both ladies were small and dark like me. They wore neat and pretty dresses that reminded me of Sunday's best. One of them wore really red lipstick. The other lady was a deaf-mute and she had a beautiful smile. The house was cute - very plain but neat. There were flowers running along the front. There was a well out front on one side and on the other side in the back, there was an outhouse. My mother was looking forward to drinking some of the well water because I guess she'd had it before and knew it to be really cold and delicious.

My aunt was kind of amazed that I had described my great-grandmother Rosie and her sister-in-law Irma. Irma was the deaf-mute with the lovely smile. My grandmother was wearing the lipstick. They had lived together ever and took care of each other since they'd been widowed. I had all the details right about the house.

I feel better now. Seeing the obits of my great gran and my grandfather reminds me that I'm not supposed to get too attached to this world. This is a tempory home and I don't want to get comfortable. A hundred years from now, someone might be looking at my faded obituary. I hope that they will realize that we are all just someone's memories.

Okay, now that I'm finished being morose and maudlin, I'm going to go look up some more ancestry info. Our family tree is deep-rooted, top-heavy, and very twisty. This is going to take some digging.

Peace
--Free




I just picked this song because I like the way it makes me feel