I talked with a colleague of mine this week who had just returned from his homeland after spending two weeks visiting his critically ill father and attending to all the business that an eldest child must take care of when their lone remaining parent is dying or already departed. “I was able to spend a lot of time with my father,” my friend told me, talking of all the little intimacies of grooming–smoothing his hair, massaging his hands and feet, whispering endearments to him–that he engaged his father with each day. His father could barely speak, but was able to acknowledge his presence and even offered a “thank you” to him after one visit. “I came back here leaving nothing behind, no regrets,” my friend confided, and I nodded. I understood what he had described: I too sat vigil for my father for a few nights as he lay dying. Though I could not say, as my friend did, that I had no regrets. I had plenty.
Over the past several days I’ve begun to re-immerse myself in family history stuff. I have at times fancied myself the family genealogist, and though I am by no means the only one, I would say I’ve been the most active and persistent over the years. One of the significant regrets I have as I think about those last days with my own father is that he was the last of his generation–one girl and three boys–children of my Dad’s dad. There is now one one to whom I can apply myself to get answers about family history. Things that could have been so easily answered by my father or his younger brother there is now no one living who knows the easy answer. My next option will be to talk to my own older siblings to see if they remember things Dad used to talk with them about.
I have so many questions, ones I didn’t even know I had until I started listening within the past week to the audiobook version of, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” by Isabel Wilkerson. It recounts the “great migration” of African Americans from the South to the North and West between 1915 and the 1970s. My grandfather was a part of the great migration, moving from Atlanta, Georgia to Little Rock Arkansas to Indianapolis Indiana before finally settling in Chicago. He migrated and I can even speculate why he did so; but I won’t know it from his lips and not from any of his children. My last known Uncle–a half brother to my father–died within the last month. I had never met this uncle and now I never will. So I have my share of regrets. The largest of which is that I never really did the research to write the book I’ve always wanted to write about my grandfather and our family’s history. And while I still can write it, the research will be that much more difficult for having lost the patriarchs of our family line.
What has any of this to do with gratitude? I am grateful for the technology and access to information I didn’t have a few years ago. Little by little I expect to be able to piece together pieces of my family history. I am grateful for the notion of family; I am connected to loving siblings and dear cousins and plan to meet up and connect with relations I haven’t met and hadn’t even realized they existed. Technology helped me find them and will help us stay in touch with them. It will allow me to do some of the digging I need to do to answer the questions and tell the stories of the various members of our family tree. I am excited by the prospect, if a little daunted, but look forward to creating time and working up the energy to give the project the attention it deserves.
I am grateful for my family, past and present. When I think about all that my ancestors and relatives had to endure simply to build a life for themselves and their families it makes me that much more determined to tell their story. I recognize the same determination in myself as I see in them, and I imagine that to be a byproduct of being a member of this family. The more I learn about them, the more I understand who I am, where I came from and why I am the way that I am. I look forward to the unfolding that’s to come.
