thevalleyfamily.org

Posted By Thomas on September 21, 2009

I work so hard on this research that the question inevitably comes up: “Why?”  I either ask it of myself, particularly on sunny days when I should be out soaking up some vitamins or getting some much-needed exercise, or from a friend while they’re looking at my statistics page.

Honestly, the rewards of this research are rather ephemeral, and even then, when the occasional thanks is delivered, I have to manufacture acceptance.  What I’m really thinking is: “You’re thanking me now, but what you don’t know is that I gave you 0.05% of the information, and that’s probably all that anyone can give you.”

So I don’t do it for the gratitude.  I used to think that I did it for the puzzle solving.  With puzzles and games, I’ve always been like a dog with one of those toys that has something inside of it:  I’ll bite and chew on the toy until I’ve finally busted it wide open, and I can see what’s been making that infuriating noise.  But, like the dog in this metaphor, I can easily get tired of the frustration of the harder puzzles, or tire of the drudgery of solving the easier puzzles.  The fact that I’ve continued this research now for over 3 years leads me to believe that it’s more than just puzzle solving that’s keeping me interested.

I think I captured the essence of it last night.  It’s an amalgam of feelings and ideas that have yet to gel in my head, but something managed to connect in my brain, and I’ve got a handle on what might be happening, here.  Kelly and I were trying to catch up on all of the missed House M.D. episodes, and we hit a show in the first season called “Histories.”  A homeless woman had been admitted to the care of the good doctor, and it wasn’t until the end of the show that we had determined she had gone mad after losing her son and husband in a car accident.  There was no one there for her, and she was the only one that carried the memories of her family, and she was dying.

Last year, Morgan was assigned Ernest J. Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying.  I’d read it more than a decade ago, but I remembered many of the plot points, so Morgan and I discussed it so he’d have a clearer understanding of the themes.  He focused on one point in the book, where the main character has the luxury of deciding on the nature of his death:  He could die like an animal or he could die like a man.  We went through what it meant to “die like a man.”  We both agreed that even if you’re religious, everyone is clear that after death, you don’t really care any more about the exact nature of your death.  ”Dying like a man,” then, is a procedure you follow through for those that will continue living on after your death.  It’s an attempt to create a meaningful memory that will outlive you in the thoughts of those for whom you care the most.

Part of being a genealogist is being a historian of a discrete set of events and groups of people.  You’re not particularly interested in World War 2, but you’re interested in the man that invented airplane-mounted radar, the man that remembered shooting at German soldiers from behind trees in the dead of winter, or the man that was finally sent to storm his first beach in the Pacific, only to be told when he got there that the Japanese had surrendered, and the war was finally over.  It’s these sorts of memories and stories that bring meaning to a person’s death.  Their lives had impact on yours beyond the mere imprint of their genetic code — their actions, no matter how distant in your past, impact what you do and how you feel today.

This feeling of being an archivist is what drives me.  I’m intimately familiar with the details of the lives of my immediate family.  But, no one else is.  Who will be there in thirty or forty years to tell people that one of my grandfathers had such strength of will that he made himself a millionaire selling nothing more than what you could pick up off the ground at a common farm, or how my other grandfather raised an entire generation of people in a small region of the Midwest to appreciate music as nothing less than the voice of God?  My only regret in this research is not foreseeing the goals I’ve now set before myself.  If I had, I would have dedicated weeks of my time to interviewing each of my living relatives.  I can’t let their memories fade.

In preserving their memories, we preserve their humanity, we preserve the meaning of their life.  In so doing, perhaps I’m trying to assure myself that those that come after me will do me the same honor, and preserve what they can of me.

Category: General Genealogical
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