“Whenever I feel sad or a little fragile, I invoke their presence (the ancestors) for support, and they never fail to be there.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
A few years ago a distant cousin tracked me down. She’d spent many years gathering together the genealogy report on the maternal side of my family going back to the early 1700’s. My great-granmother, Anna, and her great-grandfather were siblings. Anna was fourteen when she came to America on her own from Germany. She worked as a maid and saved her money to help bring her eleven siblings and mother to America.
They didn’t want to leave Germany, but they were poor farmers and the small amount of land they owned couldn’t sustain them. In America many of the siblings opened sweet shops and grocery stores – probably so they’d never go hungry again. Newly married, Anna opened a bar and grill in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of lower Manhattan and cooked hearty German food for homesick immigrants.
Setting up a life in a new country where I don’t speak the language isn’t easy. At times I call on my long line of strong female ancestors to fill me with their strength and courage. I’m grateful to know their names and stories.
Over the years I recorded my mother telling me about our family history. We sat on her couch looking through the old black and white photos as she shared bits of information about each person. One year when she looked at the photos she got the stories all mixed up. The last time we looked at the photos together the stories were gone in the blurry haze of dementia.
We honor our ancestors by learning about who they were, what they overcame to have the life they wanted, what their successes and heartbreaks were. We honor ourselves by remembering. We don’t need to like what we find out about them, we may want nothing to do with their story. But it’s still important to know what their story was.
It’s so easy now to record with the voice memo apps on our phones. Be sure and take the time to record your family stories – before they’re lost forever.
