How do you pull together the moments of a life you’ve never glimpsed?
How do you gather random facts about kin from the ether and create a story from the fragments of the past that makes sense in the present?
I don’t know the answers to these questions but I’m trying and trusting that the process of creating each spread in my Heritage Journal is weaving bits of each ancestor’s life into the tapestry of my own being…
Slowly.
Quietly.
In joy, in curiosity, and in love.
My maternal grandpa, Phil, remains an enigma in my mind and in my heart and I am still searching for so many moments and documents that are important for the whole puzzle to come together.
I know where he lived, but not where he is buried.
I know what he looked like as an adult but don’t have a single photo of him as a child.
I’ve purchased his death certificate but cannot track down a record of his birth.
I know he was tall and thin and imagine that my uncle’s and brother’s gait were/are an echo of his.
I know he was a talented artist and a tortured soul.
I know he had gigantic dreams that moved with him in the spaces between Missouri, Los Angeles, and Chicago and then set up shop with him in itty bitty New York City apartments.
I know my Grandma Eve and their children together loved him so very deeply so kept him alive with their voices since he couldn’t use his own.
On and on we go.
Is it possible to miss someone you’ve never met?
I believe it is because I do.
I also believe that, as a collage artist himself in the years before his death, he’s nodding his approval at the fractions becoming whole between the covers of my journal.
Onward,
Melis
P.S. Curious to learn more about Phil? He has his very own tag: Finding Phil