To Be Remembered

Black and white images shift through my mind, like ghosts taunting me with their presence. They synchronize their dance and float in and around my head. Kindred souls drawing me in and insisting on my attention. They won’t go away.

My ancestors speak to me, nudging me to listen. Oh, not in the ghostly sense that you might think. But in subtle, nonverbal ways that draw me into their world, beckoning me to know more, to restore their lives, and to hear their stories.

I study their faces, searching their solemn eyes for a familiar look, similar traits, a commonality of bone structure, a hint of likeness. A clue that ties me to them.

I want to know more.

I’m obsessed with learning about them at this point in my life. Those black and white images that speak to me with their dance – their blank eyes, stark poses, serious smiles, and mysterious souls.
I hold their photos, weathered from the fingers of many generations and I study them with inquisitive eyes and a yearning desire.

I want to know more.

I examine these photos for a glimpse into their lives. I see the way they stand, I look at how they touch. Hands placed ever so formally on the shoulders of their children. Little boys standing solemnly at attention. Girls with their Mary Jane shoes, ankles properly crossed. Just an ever so slight upward turn on their lips.

I admire their clothes. Did she make that dress? Did the children behave? I wonder if they were laughing right before they counted 1-2-3. Before they shook off their smiles, took their positions, and the camera flashed.

I have a casual picture of my dad and his family, taken on vacation, sitting on the steps of a building. My grandpa has his hat off, relaxing with my uncle leaning against his side. My grandma is looking off in the distance, a wistful look on her face. And my dad has his arm slung around my grandma’s neck, the nonchalant way that sons show their love. She must have cherished that rare, sweet moment.

I wonder about this photo. I wonder where they were. I wonder who took the photo. I wonder what my grandma was thinking with that look on her face.

I was only a teenager when she died, but I wish I’d been old enough to ask the questions with her sitting next to me. To look through the photos with her and in her own voice tell the stories of their life. And what she was thinking that day.

I want to know more.

Our world today is a dramatic change from theirs. We take so many pictures. We document every moment of our everyday life. For some of us, we live our days around taking photos. We can tell by social media what our friends ate for breakfast, what they do on vacation, what their house and garden look like. It is logged by date and location. We even share quick emojis of how we are feeling today. We have more than enough information about our lives.

The technology advances have multiplied by the thousands since the days of our ancestors and we can only rely on weathered photos to search out who our tribe really was. What a great find when there are notes on the back. A treasure found in an unknown handwriting. A date. A place. Maybe names. But those answers are so limited. Passed down information, many times over. Only facts, with no hint of their souls or the sound of their laughter. We rely on our imagination to guess at more.

I recently did the DNA test for my own curiosity to know more about my ancestral lineage. I found, surprisingly, that I have family roots primarily in England, Scotland, Wales, with a mixture of Scandinavia and Germany. Who knew? It makes me feel very differently about wanting to visit Europe now, to walk in those ancestral footprints that paved our family’s path to America. Those adventurous souls who wanted a different life for themselves and for us. Forefathers with the premonition and the desire to make a better life for their and our future. The ones that I give eternal gratitude that I had my feet firmly planted in the farmland of rich Illinois soil. Think of how different our lives would have been had they not made that brave and bold move towards a better life all of those centuries ago.

I want to know more.

What made them want to move? What were their lives like before? What was the one pivotal moment that made them decide to get on a boat and journey across an ocean to a whole new world? Who did they leave behind? What did they think and feel when they said their goodbyes and traveled to the unknown.

History is something I’ve never really thought about much. My mother traced our family tree years ago, before the age and ease of internet searches. She painstakingly traced our heritage, copied everything and put it in albums for my sister and I, a labor of love that I fully did not appreciate until now. I wish I’d asked her more questions while her mind was still young and recollection was easy. I regret my nonchalance and the naiveté of my youth. I get it now – that need to know and the need to leave it all behind for the next generation, lest it be forgotten and not remembered. I am on a mission to record it all.

So, I think about my life, our family’s life, and the future lives of my children and grandchildren. And the images in my head remind me, every so subtly, that our life is fully owed to the brave men and women whose faces haunt me.

I yearn to have a moment to talk to them. To get inside their head like they are in mine. To understand who they were and how they lived. To say “thank you” for their sacrifice. For their bravery. For their fortitude. For their willingness to leave behind so much, so that we might be the recipient of a Camelot life they could never even imagine in their wildest dreams.

The images dancing in my head are nodding in approval now. They are saying it’s what they wanted all along. To be thought about. To be known. To be passed along to future generations.

To not be forgotten.

To be remembered.

Simply yours,
K