I often wonder why it is that the people closest to us, in physical proximity and in heart space, are the ones most often taken for granted…
Why we assume we know the facts or, at the very least, have bits and pieces of facts clear enough in our heads that it’ll all come together easily and turn out just fine in the end.
I find myself currently in this liminal space with my maternal grandpa, Phil, who lived and died before I came earth side.
Gratefully, my mom and Grandma told me stories about him often, making him real and very much alive in my imagination as a child.
Even now I can almost hear his voice, see his movements.
Photos and stories can weave powerful magic if we allow them to.
All this being said, my physical documentation of Grandpa Phil (vital records and such) is sorely lacking.
I don’t have a birth certificate for him and cannot yet confirm him in any Census between 1920 and 1940. Thank goodness for the 1950 Census where he was married to my Grandma and had a kiddo (their first) that I could confirm.
And, as I mentioned in this post, I recently received his death certificate, which is helping me weave together the bits and pieces of information in black and white.
And yet, there’s so much in between and in the end that I’d like to see settled.
I’d like to learn how he made his way from Joplin to Chicago to LA and back to Chicago before heading to NYC.
Then there’s Croton on Hudson, a tiny town “in the country” where I believe he moved with my Grandma and kids for a short while…
And his final resting place in a small cemetery in nearby Somers.
Grandma Eve, Grandpa Phil
Kim, Jill, Kerry with unknown kitty & pup
Well, that is if we can actually find his grave.
See, as excited as I was at receiving his Death Certificate, my attempt at finding Phil, at documenting his life and final resting place, has hit a little stumbling block.
As I mentioned previously, before receiving Phil’s Death Certificate I didn’t know whether he’d been buried or cremated. Seeing a cemetery name in black and white gave me a little adrenaline rush and after Googling for numbers and making several calls, I spoke with a very nice man a few weeks ago who caretakes the cemetery who stated, “We have your Grandpa!”.
I was very excited to have found a tangible piece of Phil’s puzzle!
So, as any Genealogist might do, I asked the caretaker if he could snap me a photo when he was next nearby, which he kindly agreed to!
But instead of a photo, my next communication from him was this:
Hello Melissa, I stopped at the cemetery and I did not find a head stone or any marker. Where it is written in that he is buried there is someone else’s stone. I will have to look around and see if he is somewhere else in the cemetery.
Ugh. Stumbling block, indeed.
And as a surprising amount of sadness has bubbled up within me, I’m doing my best to not worry about it all too much…
To not let my imagination run wild about some of the horror stories I’ve heard about welfare burials and lost loved ones.
Surely, it’s a simple matter of someone writing down a 7 instead of a 1, right? Or something like that.
And so I wait…
And keep my fingers crossed…
And hope against all hope that this little adventure in finding Phil will turn out just fine, photos included.
Onward,
Melis
I have often pondered, “how could they (ancestors) have lived such a full life but they not be documented for posterity?” Then it leads to the human need to leave our own mark on the world and somehow recalled by future generations.
What is our purpose? What do our lives mean? Will our accomplishments be documented? How are we individually unique; or are we just cogs in human history? We cant all be famous, but most want to leave an impact.
These are stirred feelings when paper trails or monuments to ancestors cannot be found.
What may be frustrating too with yiur grandfather is that his life was not so long ago – a generational tie. “There must be something!” Hope you find him.
Thank you for your thoughts here, David. You are so very right in that we all want to leave our mark, no matter how grand or gentle that mark might be.
My Grandpa Phil was an artist and a music producer. He did really cool things throughout his career and was well loved by his family. He succeeded and failed at various objectives over the decades. And while I know some of his story, I long for more and I’m hopeful it’ll come.
My biggest grief around this chapter of his story is truly in (not yet) finding his final resting place, even in the knowing that he is not there… but there’s a closure there I guess I’m looking for. The fact it was a welfare burial makes sense, my grandparents were the epitome of "struggling artists", but my Grandma and all the kids left NY and moved West almost immediately after his death and, to the best of my knowledge, never looked back. There’s a sadness in the idea that he was, physically, left behind… that quite possibly, no one ever visited his grave.
Ah…the search continues!