I first embarked on what I’ve come to call my Family History Remembrance Journey in the early 2000s and it was a bumpy start to say the least.
It all really started when my maternal grandma, Eve, passed away in 1997, leaving me a few photos, a few heirlooms, and a few boxes of writings, newspaper clippings, and articles. Very little of what she left me could be considered “organized” but it was all contained, at least.
Grandma Eve was a published author, a good storyteller, and a poet. She was our Family Historian.
She was also a recovering alcoholic and a bit of a hoarder.
I was only 20 at the time and had no idea what all those boxes truly contained, I just knew they should be kept.
It’s taken me 25 years to go through it all (v e r y s l o w l y), to wrap my head around her methodologies, to recognize that while there was some fluff in the mix, most of what she left me was very intentional.
From the multiple, mixed drafts of her unfinished memoir…
to seemingly random pages from unsent letters…
to her spiral notebooks filled with appointments, addresses, and AA journal prompts…
there were breadcrumbs strewn throughout all of it that have unfolded worlds within myself at different times over the past 25 years.
Every Family Historian organizes their information differently, based on their personal preferences and methodologies. Some have boxes strewn about with the best of intentions while others have rows of binders neatly placed on bookshelves, organized alphabetically or by generation or family group.
Maybe there’s a spiral bound book someone pulled together in the last 50 years that holds the family history or stories that contain pieces of history.
Maybe you have only an outline written by your grandma, best intentions unfulfilled.
Maybe everything got lost in a move or in a fire.
Or maybe you have information about your mom’s side but not about your dad’s.
Maybe you were adopted or one of your parents were adopted.
Or maybe there’s another break in your genetic lineage somewhere along the way.
No matter where you are on your family history remembrance journey, it’s never too late to start or begin again.
It’s never too late to start or begin again.
This can be done in a variety of ways, from talking to family members to gather facts and anecdotal information, to taking a DNA test.
Maybe doing both.
And this is why I’m here, to share my family history remembrance journey with you in the hope that it’ll inspire and empower you to do the same, in whatever way works for you and on your own timeline.
And so, before I go today, I want to leave you with this:
Never believe for one second that your life will be insignificant to any of those in your lineage who have yet to come. We may not know what the world will look like in 25, 50 or 500 years, but the odds are that someone with your shared DNA will exist and be curious about those who paved the way for them.
Maybe you will be a direct ancestor, a 2x great grandmother who thrived against all odds (like Hannah), or maybe you will be the great, great aunt who never had (nor wanted) kids but owned all the cool books and showed that life can and should be creative and look however you want it to (like Eva Caroline, pictured below), or maybe you’ll be the anti-racist one who also baked, whose recipes and stories are passed down through the generations because they were just so damn good (like Dutch).
How many of these High Schoolers thought, in 1906, that countless descendants in their lineage and beyond would be excited to find this single moment online over 100 years after it was taken? Surely my 2x great aunt, Eva Caroline, (#16 right in the middle) never could have imagined how her existence would impact my own and so many others.
No matter who you are today, your life will impact those who don’t even exist yet, whether directly or indirectly.
Never doubt your importance in the grand scheme of things.
Never doubt how deeply important your life will be someday to someone you’ll never have the chance the meet.
Onward,
Melis