Sentimental Sunday :: Remembering the Grandmas

Remembering the Grandmas on Mother's Day . . .




I hear the voices of my grandmas
Calling out from a distant past
"Please do not let us be forgot.
Record our stories that we may last."


Tell the children of our wanderings
Let the kinfolk hear the tales
How we braved the new horizons
How we blazed the olden trails.


How we buried too many babies
How we struggled to keep them fed
How we caressed the hands of our loved ones
As they lay dying on their beds.


How we endured many a hardship
With an eye to the future goal
To create a more promising future
And to keep our family whole.


They were as different from each other
As the scraps in a crazy quilt
Yet once the pieces were sewn together
Another generation they had built


I can sense them calling out to me
From the gloaming of my past
"Please do not let us be forgot.
Record our stories that we may last."

The above family poem was composed by me back in 2009 in response to a challenge posted at Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Poetry and Genealogy . . . and the Wordle (name cloud) was created at wordle.net . . .

Unvisited Tombs

And now having inscribed this brief record, I realize how difficult it is to write history.


A few names have been mentioned,
a few dates noted,
but how many threads must be dropped,
how many facts unwritten,
how many persons forgotten.

Faces vanish,
voices are hushed,
footsteps heard no more.

It may be events important in their results,
names potent for good or ill,
have found no place in this simple story . . .

And we deeply feel the truth of that beautiful saying of George Eliot:

The growing good of the world
is partly dependent on unhistoric acts;
and that things are not so ill
with you and me
as they might have been,
is half owing to the number
who lived faithfully a hidden life,
and rest in unvisited tombs.

Charles P. Kane (1850-1918)

Were an epitaph to be my story

And were an epitaph to be my story
I'd have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone:
I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

Robert Frost

The Family Scribe -- every family has one

My feelings are in each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors . . . to put flesh on their bones and make them live again . . . to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve.


To me . . . doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before.


We are the story tellers of the tribe . . . all tribes have one . . . we have been called as it were by our genes . . . those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story . . . so, we do . . . and, in finding them, we somehow find ourselves.


How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors you have a wonderful family you would be proud of us? How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.


It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who am I and why do I do the things I do.


It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it.


It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today.


It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family.


It goes to deep pride that they fought to make and keep us a Nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them.


So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are them and they are us.


So, as a scribe called I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take their place in the long line of family storytellers.


That, is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and put flesh on the bones.

Versions of this piece are found quoted on genealogy sites all over the internet. It is most often attributed to Della M. Cummings Wright.

Today I visited yesterday . . .

Today I visited yesterday
And walked among the graves
Of family and friends from long ago
Whose memory had begun to fade.


  The graves were unattended
As were my thoughts of them
When a vision of the ages past
Brought back my sense of kin.

The vision showed the church lawn
On a crisp summer day
The table spread, the food prepared
And friends who would break bread.

  All my relatives were there
both young and old
Grandma and I walked hand and hand
Sharing stories never told.

We laughed and cried
And shared our thoughts
And I found the friend
I thought I'd lost.

As the sun began to fade . . .
The church bell rang out clear
Grandma and the others
slowly disappeared . . .

  Today I visited yesterday
And now the memory is strong
Of the family from which I came . . . and now belong . . .

by Pat Conner Rice

Begotten and never forgotten

I can sense them calling out to me

From the gloaming of my past

"Please do not let us be forgot.

Record our stories that we may last."

From an original poem posted at .: BeNotForgot :. which was composed for Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Poetry and Genealogy.

We are formed by our family histories

How easy it is to forget from where family has come and how far. How easy to forget, as I sit at my computer, my grandfather's battered lunch pail, and my grandmother leaning over an aluminum tub with a washboard and Grandpa's soapy shirt. Such knowledge brings humility. It demands gratitude. We are formed, in part, by our family histories. . . . from Family history is more than names by Tina Griego, Denver Post Columnist

A hundred year old photograph

A hundred year old photograph
Stares out from a frame
And if you look real close you'll see
Our eyes are just the same

I never met them face to face
But I still know them well
From the stories
My dear grandma would tell . . .

They're my guardian angels
And I know they can see
Ev'ry step I take
They are watching over me

I might not know where I'm goin'
But I'm sure where I come from
They're my guardian angels
And I'm their special one

Words & Music by
Don Schlitz, John Jarvis & Naomi Judd
Copyright 1989
Song Name: Guardian Angels
Artist Name: The Judds
Album: The Essential Judds
Release Date: October 10, 1995 (my Dad's last birthday on this earth)
Label: RCA Records