It is remarkable to me how little effort it takes to love the people who came before us. The promise of Elijah—that our hearts will turn to our fathers—it is so close. So strangely close, and so captivating once grasped.
I do graveyard research. As an archaeologist it’s kind of a pet hobby of mine—something I wish I could turn into my thesis or dissertation, but there are very few people in the world to whom I could defend my research.
Anyway. Right now I am building a database of certain monuments found in a quiet sea-side churchyard in southern Wales. It’s tailored to the focus of my research, but when I’ve done with that I am going to add in all the detail I can to my tables of names and relationships, and then I am going to post it online for genealogists to use. It’s the least I can do.
It is startling, though, to realize how very alive these people were. And how the joy and sorrow and pain and hope they felt can come welling up from the past with so very little effort on our parts.
This stone isn’t much to look at. But if you read it carefully, you’ll see that the mother died at 34 after seeing first her 12 year old eldest son die at sea—and then losing her next son at 15, also into the depths of the ocean. This happened all the time. Ships went down, people were lost—children died of fevers and people had to move on—somehow.
It wasn’t until I read the final entry on the stone, cramped into the very bottom space as it was that the full import of this monument hit me. The husband—who called his wife “beloved” and who had buried two sons and that same wife had lived to be 80. Somehow, he had survived the travails of ocean and mortality to die at an old age, while the people he obviously loved so much were long, long gone.
I find myself weeping for this man—long since dust. Someone who may not even have spoken my language—but someone who shares the beautiful, blinding humanity that is our greatest blessing and our greatest handicap.
I don’t know if these people have any living relations or if their family died with those two loved sons. But they are as real and precious to me as my own blood, and I feel responsibility—reaching over a century of time and six thousand miles of ocean.
After all, he was someone’s father.
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7 comments:
perspective. this is beautiful, sweet sadness. this is our journey isn't it?
This is a beautiful piece of writing. And it mirrors my own passion for the family history. Not just names, but living human beings. It's so hard to understand time, so hard to believe that lives have been lived - are being lived, outside of our own world of experience, that are as real as our own. I believe that caring about them makes our hearts more complete, and teaches us a deeper love.
Well done.
The great joy for me in believing in life after death is living with the hope of reuniting with those who left us behind. Can you imagine the joy for this man reuniting with his wife and sons lost so long ago? :)
A beautiful song on this subject was crafted by the late Dan Fogelberg entitled "Forefathers" .. it is the history of his own ancestors in song. A humorous, haunting, thought-provoking melody and lyric.
(Enjoy Wales - I'm told that's where my family name is from but nothing concrete to connect to it. Ling or Lyng)
I loved this post! How thoughtful and sweet.
It is really interesting to think of those that came before as real people, with real pain and real stories. It's just so easy to kind of pass them off as not having lived as fully as us, isn't it?
You're a sweetie.
I love historical things. You can almost feel the barrier of time get really thin and you can feel the ghosts right by you.
History is cool but I never get sad for them because I have had heartbreak and sadness in my own life and it what helps us to become what and who we are.
All those events made him into the person that made that last little entry that caught your attention.
To wish it never happened to him is robbing him of the very things that made him who he was! :)
Uncle Mike
charlotte! I've been reading your blog for a while now and thought I'd leave a comment! you are a GREAT writer. So good to keep in touch with you. :)
danika
I think that sometimes in life it is easy to get lost in the boring and mundane tasks that seem to account for the majority of our existence. This is one of the reasons I love books so much. I get to escape the slow-paced monotony, or seemingly pointless stress of work and school, for an adventure where the characters are constantly moving with a purpose. I often wish that my life had such meaning. But, when I hear stories from people of the past that actually lived and breathed in this world, I realize that drama is not limited to the realms of fiction. These people's lives are stories of achievement and failure, grief and joy, monotony AND adventure. Then I think of my own life and the life of friends and family, those who are still living and breathing, and I realize that the human drama did not die with our ancestors but continues on, even if sometimes it is easy to forget since our stories unfold over the long course of years and decades, not just a few hundred printed pages. Learning about the details of a person's life in the past transforms their name from a lifeless piece of data to a meaningful denotation, and enables us to take on a broader and deeper perspective when considering our lives and the future. The past is an integral part of us.
So, yeah... in other words: archaeology (and genealogy) is awesome!
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