Mortality

[€uroMeinke]

Don't mean to bring the mood down for anyone, but this topic seems to have converged on me this weekend. Yesterday I learned one of my high school acquaintances died of a heart attack, a fact made more sad as he followed his wife who died maybe a month or two ago, after a long hospital stay. So it's weird to be celebrating my 50th this year and realizing that I have a growing list of people I knew that did not make it to this point.

Add to this a recent stay at a cabin in Joshua Tree that once belonged to a ceramicist/artist, Francette, who died of cancer in France but seemingly left her place ready to return to. I blogged about this, and this morning I got a note from someone who knew her. It was strange to come across someone's personal artifacts and then start to put together her legacy. As far as I can tell she had no children or close relatives to take anything, and not having kids myself I wonder what odd mysterious legacy I might leave some random person to discover.

Yesterday I also listened to an old Radiolab podcast that seemed to be about the same topic, someone finding a collection of letters along a roadside and trying to reconstruct the person's life. I kind of feel I did the same thing with Francette and wonder what new light might be shed - and if she'd look upon my reconstruction with dread or fondness.

Add to the mix, tomorrow will be the first anniversary of my own mother's death. I continue to pour through her photographs and papers putting together pieces of my parents life that were unknown to me in my childhood. It's still odd to me that I can't take some of this stuff back to my mother and ask simple questions about the things I find - I can only speculate or keep digging a little deeper in hopes something will turn up to answer my questions.

THis has me thinking about what legacy I might leave, or would want to leave to someone coming across my artifacts without the benefit of having me around to ask simple questions.

Anyway, my thoughts ramble on this topic, I'm a blend of amusement and sorrow over much of this but thought I'd throw this out there for anyone else to share any post-mortum detective work they may have done, and how it changed the way it made them think of themselves.

[alphabassettgrrl]

Indeed. We're not leaving kids, either, and I kind of wonder who will be in charge of going through things. Not to mention that a lot of our lives now are digital- who will know the passwords to get into things, and close accounts, etc?

[Strangler Lewis]

Who died?

[€uroMeinke]

Chuck Kenlein

[Strangler Lewis]

That's too bad. I didn't know him that well in high school. I remember him being a presence on the listserve about our 20 year reunion. I think he may have just gotten married then, or maybe I saw that vicariously somewhere else in cyberspace. Anyway, sad all around.

[katiesue]

I've done a awful lot of postmortem detective work. Our house was full of everyone's things. My maternal grandmother bought it in 1952. Her mother in law and her mother both lived with them before they died. So some of their things ended up in the basement.

My paternal grandmother (this all gets confusing as my Dad was raised by his aunt and uncle only no one told him) died in the early 60's right after my parents got married. My grandfather then moved away so a lot of her things got stored in the basement. Some hadn't even been unpacked they were still in the original newspapers.

Then various Great Aunts and Uncles passed away. Some never had children so their things ended up in the basement as well.

We moved into the house in 1976. So lots of our things ended up down there as well. Then my Dad died in 1990. Mom went through some of it (the large porn collection was gone) but a lot of it was still there.

I spent a year going through all of their belongings. A lot of it I don't really know whose is whose. Boxes of blurry, tiny, mystery photographs. Letters from people I have no idea who they are. Little boxes of treasures that must have meant something to someone.

There were a lot of my paternal grandmothers things. All still boxed up as they were in the early 60's. It made me sad. None of her things were deemed worth enough of even taking out to look at in all that time. I found a beautiful tea set that I took home. She loved to give large parties and had an extensive collection of glasses. None of them costly crystal but I've got a few of her champagne and liqueur glasses. I'm guessing I'll never use most of this but I feel she passed in our family relatively unnoticed.

There are very few photos of my grandmother. At least that I've found so far. The ones she's in are small and she's far away. I found one portrait of her as a child and one with my grandfather when they were very young. My cousin told me it was a very unhappy marriage. I know my Dad was very spoiled being an only child. He rarely spoke of her. I'm not exactly sure what all went down when he found out she was really his Aunt, and his real parents and sisters lived one house over. Whatever it was he never spoke of it.

No one actually spoke of her much. My grandfather remarried (his high school sweetheart) and I never heard him speak of her at all. My Dad only very rarely. My great Aunts & Uncles, Cousins, all never really speak of her. I have no idea if she had any friends. I know family was very important to her. Otherwise not much else. No letters, scrap books, photo albums. I'm sure she must have possessed all of those things.

I just feel badly that she's so missing from our family. She died before I was born. I'm sure she would have been one of those grandparents that was at your house every day. At every game, play, awards ceremony. My cousin Lorena is like that. My other grandparents weren't horrible people or anything but my maternal grandfather died long before I was born, my fraternal grandfather moved away and my maternal grandmother worked, then moved when I was in 4th grade.

I think I missed out not knowing her. And with the few artifacts I've got I don't get a great sense of what she was really like. A few of my relatives that knew her don't really say much about her. It just makes me sad. And even more sad knowing that my Dad was so important to her, but seemed to have erased her. I don't know what their relationship was like in person but with how little he even mentioned her I don't think he ever got over it.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

My grandmother has been ill recently (doing better now) and it's becoming very clear that we need to get her recollections recorded, as she has many stories to tell. When she passes a lot of knowledge will go with her. We must make time for this.

[Betty]

One of my largest regrets in life is not valuing the relationship with my grandfather when I was high school. We were very close when I was younger. I spent summers on their ranch. I was also close with my grandmother who died when a few years before... before he sent me a letter that I kept and forgot about. I found it again as an adult and it broke my heart when he wrote to me how lonely he was. I was so self absorbed that I couldn't see beyond my own happiness. I did not visit with my grandma enough when she was ready to die. I saw her in the hospital and she wasn't like my grandma anymore. Her red hair wasn't.

I now fear I'm going to suffer the same fate. Die alone. And lonely. I say this knowing full well I am married with a family and not alone. I don't dwell on this or anything - but maybe feel it's my fate because I didn't do better.

I have one remaining Grandma and we get together with mom and lunch a few times a month. She doesn't remember much, including that we've just had lunch, but I hope it makes her happy anyway.

Mentioned in another thread, my husband's grandma recently passed. I haven't been to a funeral like hers before - although from what I've heard from others, it's very much in line with funerals they've been to. It was open casket, with a separate service at the graveside. Then they lowered her into the ground and dumped dirt with a shovel symbolically. Then a dump truck came and filled up the hole. Seeing the roots sticking out down inside the hole made an impression in my mind.

I've never been to an open casket funeral before. It was... more upsetting than I was prepared for. We found out only moments before walking in as my mother in law warned my husband, knowing it would be a surprise.

My side of the family is more of a cremation type and buried at sea, or as my Mom recently told me, wanting to be scattered in the desert.

[Ghoulish Delight]

When my grandmother, my mother's mother, passed away in December, most of my mom's cousins came to the funeral. She grew up very close with them, spending summers living and working with them in close quarters at the family resort in South Haven Michigan. But my mom was a bit of an outsider from the group, being very much her father's daughter (i.e., less boisterous, outgoing, and generally brash). So in adulthood she was not nearly as close with them, and my sister and I grew up barely knowing them. Recently we've been reconnecting with them a little bit, and have heard some stories from the resort days, but it's still very distant from me.

Which is all a lot of background, just to bring up the video tape one of those cousins brought with him. It had video from the early 80's of my grandmother, my parents, and the cousins simply talking about the family, who was who, and some of the family history. The biggest chunk was my grandmother recounting what she could remember of her parents and grandparents and their path from Russia to here.

It was 30 minutes of magic. Particularly since my grandmother had really lost her light years and years ago, it was something else to see her alive, vibrant, an animated again

[Betty]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Which is all a lot of background, just to bring up the video tape one of those cousins brought with him. It had video from the early 80's of my grandmother, my parents, and the cousins simply talking about the family, who was who, and some of the family history. The biggest chunk was my grandmother recounting what she could remember of her parents and grandparents and their path from Russia to here.

It was 30 minutes of magic. Particularly since my grandmother had really lost her light years and years ago, it was something else to see her alive, vibrant, an animated again

It's too late for my grandma - but not for my parents.