Rinse and Repeat

My grandfather died last summer, and my grandmother followed him about a week ago. As I write this I’m sitting in the Detroit airport waiting for my mother to arrive so that we can take the last plane ride together to Kalamazoo, where my grandmother will be laid to rest next to the still dirt covered grave of my grandfather.   I live in California and she was visiting my brother when my grandmother died. 

 This time, like a few months ago, I packed only a conservative black dress and shoes into a small bag I can take on the airplane.  It’s the same black dress I bought for my Grandfather’s funeral, and the dress I already know will be used for only this purpose for the foreseeable future.  I have the brief thought that I’m getting used to the whole funeral travel thing, so it will be easier next time. Then  I quietly hope there will never be a next time. 

  

Airports are strange places when you’re traveling for death. Usually I welcome the anonymity that comes with air travel, and I enjoy the people watching. Usually there is excitement in the packing for the trip, and happiness greeting me at its conclusion.  The airport layover, usually a time when I’m anticipating the next flight of the trip and wondering if I should get another coffee while I wait, today feels like a holding room to the inevitable sadness that awaits the end of the next flight, and I feel immeasurably lonely.

 It’s at these times I question the choices I’ve made that led me here, and why at 36 years old, I have no husband to hold my hand and drive the car so I don’t have to do it while I’m crying, or children to give unconditional love hugs whenever they see even a trace of sadness in me.  Then inevitably, I make myself laugh out loud as I systematically go through every boyfriend I’ve ever had and imagine how they would handle this situation if they were here, and suddenly being alone is preferable because each of those guys was definitely not the right one for this situation. 

In fact, I’m fairly certain at least two of them would have somehow turned this event into something that was all about them and I would be the one doing the consoling.  

Three others wouldn’t have bothered to come along at all.

Ultimately, I realize that my life is exactly what it should be, and I’m exactly where I should be at this moment. 

Which right now is at an airport waiting.

Waiting to say goodbye one last time, and waiting for whatever is next.

The Not Good Place to Get a Date

This being California, there are A LOT of adorable cute girls in the gym, in color coordinated outfits and flat ironed hair. Heck I even saw one girl wearing fake eyelashes. They stroll casually on the treadmills, careful not to break a sweat that might smear their carefully applied makeup, or cause their silicone boobs to bounce in a way that gives them away as fake. They are impeccable.  They are clearly at the gym to meet guys, which is fine. With only a very few exceptions, the vast majority of men who spend an inordinate amount of time working out are not my type anyway.  The gym princesses only annoy me when they're faking a workout on the equipment I want to use.

By contrast, when I'm at the gym, I'm GROSS. I mean, seriously not pretty. My clothes are focused on comfort, and if they match that's a bonus.  I wear my hair in any fashion that will keep it from coming into contact with my skin AT ALL, and like most fair skinned people, my face is usually a brilliant shade of red.  I'd post a photo here but it would scare babies and old people.  In fact, when I happen to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I'm horrified at how terrible I look. 

So imagine my surprise when one of the guys I know to be a bodybuilding junkie at my gym approaches me with the following: 

Him: Hey, how are you?

Me: (looking around to make sure he's talking to me) Um, good thanks.

Him: What do you do?

Me: I work at the theater.

Him: oh..... you like bodybuilders? 

Me: (confused) uh, sure.

Him: 'cause I'm a bodybuilder..... you ever dated a bodybuilder?

Me: (really confused) I don't think so?

Him: Like a real bodybuilder? extra buff with an eight pack, like this. (shows me his)

Me: (completely perplexed) No, definitely not.

Him: How old are you?

Me: Excuse me?

Him: You look 26.

Me: Thanks.

Him: So have you?

Me: What?

Him: You know, dated a serious bodybuilder?

Me:  Nope.

Him: My exs all dumped me because I got into bodybuilding, you wouldn't have a problem with that would you? I used to be all scrawny but now I'm not and I need a girl to be okay with that.

Me: (laughing) good for you.

Him: You got any piercings or tats?

Me:  Uh, No.

Him: Girls with belly button rings are hot, you got one of those?

Me:  (shakes head) 

Him: Oh. My exs all had those. What about tats?

Me: I said no.

Him: Sorry, didn't mean to offend. Did you ever have any?

Me: Does that matter? I haven't got anything now.

Him: Oh. I think it's cool you're in theater. I like good acting, are you good?

Me: I'm not actually an actor.

Him: You ever do any TV? Cause you look really familiar.

Me: I'm not an actress. Maybe you know me from the gym here?  

Him: Maybe! I actually work out at three gyms around here though.

Me: that's nice.

Him: Not all gyms are the same you know.

Me: you don't say.

Him: So what's your number? I gotta get to the next gym. I do arms there and then core at Western.

Me: Why don't you give me yours, I'll text mine to you.

Him: sweet!

(He gives his number to me verbally, which I don't write down, acknowledge, or attempt in any way to remember)

Him: I'll text you later, girl, and we can continue this chat. Peace!

He jogs off then, obviously pleased with what he sees as success, and leaves me there looking for the camera showing this was all a big joke.

The Last Word for a Great Man

I was honored to be given the opportunity to give the Eulogy at my grandfather's funeral service.  This is the transcript, which I thought would post here so that it always exists somewhere. 

I've often heard Warren Barber, my Papa, referred to as a great man, the patriarch of our family.  As I was traveling home, sitting on the planes and in the airports, I started wondering exactly what that might mean, both to the people who were saying it to me, but also to those of us in the family that he loved so much.  

According to Webster’s Dictionary, the first definition of Patriarch is “a man who leads a family, clan, or tribe; a king.”  

Papa was certainly all of those things.  He started his own business, put all his kids through college, gave my grandmother Elizabeth whom he loved beyond reason, everything she ever wanted.  

 But Warren Barber was more than a good father or good king to our family.  He was more than just a patriarch. When my brother died, it was Papa who came to pick me up from the neighbors house after the accident, and it was Papa who first comforted me when we got the dreadful news that Hollis was gone from us.  

He supported each of us in anything we might want to try, in every crazy endeavor.  Don’t get me wrong, he had no problem telling you exactly how crazy he thought your idea or your plan was, and how insane you might be to attempt it.  But then,  after he’d said his peace, he would pause and say say, “Well, if I can help out, let me know.”   And then he’d have your back after that.

Family was central to my Papa. When my mother was a little girl and her allergies got bad during the summer, he’d drive her around in the car because it was air conditioned.  He visited his mother every night after dinner until the day she died, filling my childhood with post dinner car rides from Main Street to Park Street, where I could play with the same toys my Papa had played with as a child, in the same living room that had once known the small  footfalls of  his little brother, Bobbie, who had died during a measles epidemic in 1924.  Sometimes Great-Grandma and Papa would barely talk to each other during those visits.  They’d sit and watch baseball, or the news. Once on the drive home I asked him why they didn’t talk that night.  He replied, “Sometimes you know someone so well you don’t need to talk, it’s just about being there.”   In the last few years when I would go visit Papa, sometimes we wouldn’t talk. I knew that was okay, because for him it was just about being together.   

I grew up always knowing my Papa was there for me.   His loss leaves our family with a hole in the middle, because Warren Barber was the heart and the soul of our family.  The center-point on which we all rotated.   Without him, we who have been left behind have been cast adrift and must re-calibrate to a world without him.

  

Still, on the other side of that loss, I know that he is again with the friends and family who have already left us.  His mother and his father, his baby brother,  his golfing buddies, and most of all Hollis and Jennifer, who have waited for him all these years and whom I have no doubt were the first to welcome him home.  

In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote, "He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall never look up his like again." Although it was not written for him, a better sentiment for Warren Barber cannot be expressed.   I too, will never look upon his like again.

My Grandpa is Dead

It's amazing to me how with one simple act, a person moves from a reality to a memory.

My Papa was born in 1917, and from that day until his last, he had the kind of memory that makes genealogists and historians go weak in the knees. I think he must have remembered every day of his life.

He saw Babe Ruth play in Tiger's Stadium with his dad in the 1920s.  We didn't know about that until shortly before he died.  In the middle of an uninteresting conversation about baseball, he said it like it was something everyone had done, like he wasn't sitting in room full of people who knew of The Babe only from faded photographs and scratchy video.  He said simply, "I saw him play in Detroit, with my dad."  Like it happened everyday.

A similar experience had happened a few years earlier, when my mom and I stopped in to visit on our way home from the movies.  He asked what we'd seen and my mom said, "We saw Seabiscuit, about this horse in the 1930s."  My Papa muttered, "Seabiscuit, that little horse from California?"  My mother responded, "Yes,"  And Papa, as if he was telling you that he'd had a banana for breakfast that day, said "I saw that little horse run 39."

Just like that, he mentions this legendary horse and his brush with history, and that he'd just driven across the country.  My mother looked at him incredulously.

"Dad, you were in California in the 1930s? Why?"
"I drove your Aunt Crystal out there and stopped at the race track on the way back."
"You drove to California in the 1930s?"
"Yes, what's the hullaballo? She had to go and I drove her."

Never mind that the trip, before highways, probably took more than a week.  Never mind that it would have been an unbelievably historic trip to have made during the Great Depression. He drove to California. He saw Seabiscuit run... what's the big deal?

He was like that about every event in his life. No matter how big or how small, it happened, he lived it, and that was it. He served as a Supply Sargent in World War II in what he always called "The Forgotten Theater" of China, Burma, and India. He didn't see a lot of action, but he did trades with the British.  As he said it, the British liked our military issue sunglasses, and the Americans were jealous of the British issued shorts, which they wore instead of long pants.  So my Papa would trade the American sunglasses for the British shorts.  He was always a businessman.

He came back from the war, worked in a Papermill for awhile and then started his own small boats and motors business.  He also had six kids.  Like most grandparents, mine also functioned as babysitters when the grandkids started to arrive.  Papa would be at the store next door to his house, and we'd wander over there after lunch to visit when my grandma started watching her "shows"-- the dull soap operas that filled afternoon TV.

 He would tell us to "pick out a boat" in the showroom, and when we did, he'd lift us into it so we could play inside. It was a way to keep us out of trouble, but for me, it was the best playroom imaginable. My brothers and I would catch fish, storm castles, and kill dinosaurs all from the confines of a 12' bass fishing boat parked on a trailer in a showroom.  When we got to play in the pontoon boats, that was a real treat indeed, those weren't usually in the showroom.  Often, my cousin Rachel would be there too, and to this day she's more of a sister.  We grew up together, in my Papa's store.

When he died last week, a little piece of my childhood disappeared forever. I could not imagine a world in which Papa didn't exist, and yet he was gone.

Gone with all the answers to all the questions I never thought to ask.

So I bought a black dress I'll never wear again, and flew home to say goodbye one last time. To him, to the laugh and the mischievous smile, to the twisted sense of humor I loved so much (and many say I inherited), to the smell of his house, the papery feel of his skin when I kissed his cheek.

And if I sit quietly, I can hear him say one last time the thing he always said when I was leaving, "You're a good kid Tracy, I love you."

I love you too, Papa.

Genealogists can Set the Record Straight

In 1906, an earthquake shook San Francisco. It came to be known as the Great Quake and nearly leveled the city. Afterward, a fire raged, turning whatever was left to ash.
When the shaking and burning stopped, there were, officially, 478 dead-- a number that seems ridiculously low when viewing the images of the disaster.


Subsequent counts estimated the number of dead closer to 700, but in the last decade there has been extensive research, created in part by genealogists searching for data to fill their family trees.


Gladys Hanson, San Francisco's City Historian, started counting the dead when genealogists in the 1970s began contacting her about death records. By cross referencing cemetery records, death records, and other genealogical data, she now estimates the death toll closer to 5,000--- and she isn't done.

Many people said that the official death count could never be accurate because so many people fled San Francisco after the quake and just never returned. While this is true, there are just as many family histories claiming relatives died in San Francisco-- after the quake relatives outside the city never heard from their loved ones ever again. It stands to reason that if you lived in the city and survived this horrendous disaster, you'd communicate to your family back east that you were okay, right?

Genealogy does go hand in hand with history. I can't even begin to recall the number of times I've lost ancestors inexplicably and needed to see what was happening in the area historically to find them again. I can't imagine how difficult a large scale disaster like the 1906 Quake would make it to find ancestors. Especially if they were just never heard from again. I think I like Gladys Hanson, a lot.

The Strangest Thing that Ever Happened

I was "un-friended" today on Facebook by an old friend, and I was also told that our "friendship has come to an end." Not by a teenager, not someone I'd known for only six months, but a friend of nearly six years who is allegedly an adult in his own right. I'm completely amazed.

I have lots of friends I disagree with, and lord knows I'm opinionated. However, while I love all my friends dearly, I especially respect and love those who have different opinions than mine because they challenge how I think, challenge the way I view the world. I think it's profoundly important that we surround ourselves with people who do not agree with us 100%, otherwise we get a skewed view of the world and the other remarkable people who inhabit it.

I'm fairly certain my mother is the only one who reads this blog, and I'm okay with it. I try to let it be somewhat funny, because after all, hunting dead relatives is a very silly hobby, but also I want it to be something that points out the ridiculousness in how people behave. I don't mind when people point out the ridiculous in me... coming to terms with the worst parts of ourselves is probably the greatest challenge we face in our lives.... but if you don't point out to me WHY the behavior or statement is wrong, or misleading, then you aren't providing me with an opportunity to grow. I say this because the content of this blog was cited as one of the reasons our friendship had to end, but my old friend refused to elaborate. Again, I'm amazed. I think the worst thing I've done on here is to allege my ancestor was serial killer, and she's several generations dead, so what does she care?

People become crazy about genealogy, but ultimately, who really cares about any of it? Only those of us who search out these dead individuals who contributed in some distant way to who we are. For every woman who doesn't research, or every guy who declares I'm not a member of a family, there are hundreds of genealogists who share photos, and stories and relish finding others walking the same path, even if the information they're looking for is different.

You know, the kind of people I would choose for friends.

In terms of my old friend, regardless of how he thinks of me, I will always regard him as a friend, and when I think of him, I'll send him light and love.... and then let it go.

Your Relatives are not Famous, and Neither are Mine.

Have you ever noticed how those people who believe in reincarnation were always someone famous in their past lives? They were a King, or a Martyr, or some other historical figure of great importance. I've had several people tell me they were Henry V, or Charlemagne, or even someone like Anne Boleyn in their previous life. They're never a serf, or a slave. They're never someone of dubious history, or someone downright evil. No one has ever, to my knowledge, claimed to be Genghis Khan, or Rasputin, or Robespierre. No one has ever claimed to be Hitler reincarnated.

The same is true of many family historians. They love to claim famous ancestors. So much so, that many so called genealogists actually doctor their family trees to support the tie to a legendary individual, instead of acknowledging that most of us are descended from the shoulders on which great men stood, rather than the great men themselves.

Case in point: Several nights ago I was at a dinner with a group of friends. A friend and I were discussing genealogy when another friend interrupted with the story of his supposedly researched family tree. Turns out this man sitting at that very dinner table was related to two Medieval Kings! Imagine! And incidentally, they were two kings that weren't related to each other! Imagine how blue the blood is in his veins! Wow. Of course, when asked how exactly they connect to my friend, he is unsure, even if it's on his father or mother's side.

Here's the thing, the vast majority of Americans tend to claim English royalty in their lineage, but there have been only 69 rulers of England, and only 40 since the Normans invaded in 1066. By contrast, there have been 44 United States Presidents.

We all want to be important, and genealogy is popular in the United States because we have a desire to find out where we came from. Humans are social and want to associated with a community, and we want to produce, or be, something of value to our world.

I'm like everyone else. I would love to find someone great in my family tree. I'd love to be related to a King, or an Indian Princess, or even a United States President-- preferably a well respected and loved one. However, to doctor my tree to create the illusion of a famous relative is dishonest, and I would always know it's not true. A hollow win isn't really a win at all, and it diminishes what so many of our other ancestors did do, which was to create a new life for themselves in a new, uncharted world. That's pretty legendary, even if their names are not remembered by the masses.

How The Story Ends

Until last week, I had never seen a photo of my grandfather before he was married to my grandmother. I had never seen him as a little boy. I knew he was born in Kentucky. I knew all the dates and names there are to know. I even found out he'd married someone before my grandmother, and that my father has a half brother out there somewhere. Family secrets just don't hold up against public records and a dedicated genealogist.

I was working online when another woman contacted me through Ancestry.com, and said she was a distant cousin, and had photos of my grandfather as a boy. She sent me copies, and I waited with baited breath for the ultimate goal of any genealogist, the elusive "identified photograph." When they arrived, I poured over them, and then proceeded to digitize them so I could put them on the site.

As I was loading them I saw it. I'd looked at the photo a dozen times at least, but this time I saw him. My grandfather, young, maybe not yet twenty, smiling the same smile my father has, the same smile I look at every day in the mirror. There he was, younger than I am now, before my grandmother, before my dad. A life full of opportunity yet to be lived.

His life flashed through my mind in the form of all the photos I'd seen of what came after this one. Marrying my grandma, enlistment, the war, the lifetime of service to Ac Delco in Flint, Michigan, riding motorcycles with my dad, the deaths of his parents, the accident that would claim his arm and make him the old man I knew in my childhood, the loss of my grandma, and finally, his own death.

Here I was looking at this photo of a young man with everything in front of him, and yet it was all behind him now. In that instant, I felt many things, among them, loss.

My "Gramps" died when I was only twelve, and his grumpiness in those days made me afraid of him. I really never knew him at all. What I would give to sit next to him with these photos and say, "Who was that?" "Where was this taken?" "How old are you here?" The stories connected to these photos are lost forever.

We look at photographs everyday and comment to each other on Facebook, or in family groups as they're passed around, "Oh, you look so young there," or "Wow, you looked so beautiful that day, how happy you were." Yet there will come a time when nobody knows anyone in the photos we leave behind. Someday, a descendant of mine will look at an old photo of me, taken when I was young, with my whole life ahead of me, and that descendant will already know how the story ends.

YOU don't belong

Recently, I had someone tell me that I wasn't as "much of" a member of a genealogical line because I didn't have the same last name as the ancestor we were both researching.
It went something like this:

Me: "So X Harding married my Grandfather and moved to Michigan."

Them: "So you're not a Harding then?"

Me: (registering confusion) "Excuse me?"

Them: "You're not a Harding then, because your grandma was a Harding, not your grandpa."

Me: "How does that make me not a Harding?"

Them: "You don't have the name, so you're not a part of the family anymore."

Me: (Stunned silence)

WHAT?

This makes no sense at all. I'm female. If I get married, does that mean I'm no longer a "part" of my parents family? I think my mother would argue that I'm still her daughter regardless of what surname I have, and moreover, I think she still considers herself her father's daughter, even though she has my father's name.

Moreover, if I share a common ancestor with another person, and neither of us have that name, does that mean we aren't a "part" of the family line? Should we then not even bother with any maternal lines, because, after all, we aren't a part of those families?

And furthermore, as an unmarried woman, should I NOT bother researching my father's line, since eventually I will no longer be a "part" of that line?

Seriously, where do people get these theories? Why does it matter what my last name is when researching family HISTORY? I'm as much my great grandmother's ancestor as I am my great grandfather's. DNA and genes hold that truth to be self evident.

Stupid people shouldn't be allowed to do genealogy.

I think I'm related to a Serial Killer

My Great Great Grandmother was married four times by the time she was fifty.

By the time she died herself, I *think* this was her name:

Adaline Holiday Simpson Matthews Gager Smith

I say *think* because her fourth husband, whom she married in 1895, was dead by 1905, and she was still listed as widowed in the 1910 Census. Still, she didn't die until approx 1916 which left her a whopping 6 years to get married again, and since I can't find her dead under any of the above names, I can only assume she probably had another one.

Now, in Genealogy it's fairly common to find people married more than once. Childbirth claimed a lot of women's lives, and I have a couple male ancestors who were married three times ... but even that's a bit more uncommon.

Here's the real kicker though.

Each of my great great grandmother's husbands died before she married the next one.

Died.

Of What?

Nobody knows.

But I think I do.