The family tree.....

I was reading Martha Stewart's blog the other day and she had posted pictures of tombstones at a graveyard near her home in Bedford, NY. Most of the headstones were dated the 1800's. One was from the 1600's! She named names and speculated as to what their life must've been like, whether their kin was buried next to them or if there was something special mentioned on their headstone. I wonder if the current family members of those buried folk know their ancestors story?

I know some people would find this type of walk-a-bout creepy, but I don't. I spent many hours as a kid walking through old and forgotten mountain-side burial plots looking for past family members. See, my Mom was, and still is a little, into genealogy--searching and tracking our family history. She was the first one who introduced me to tombstone rubbing. That is when you use white paper up against a headstone that is a little too worn for the naked eye to make out. With charcoal or pencil lead you then lightly go over the white paper and voila'! you would have a charcoal relief of what the tombstone originally said. Plus it gave her a 'hard copy' of full names and birth and death dates that she could carry home in hopes of connecting-the-dots with other family members.

She's gone back many, many generations on my Dad's side and quite a few on her side of the family too. Oh, the stories she has told me about some very colorful folks in our family history. Not to mention the family scandal or two that had been swept under the rug for years upon years only to be uncovered by....my Mom. There were quite a few undocumented name changes, one or two illegitimate children, a couple of mistresses, a couple of altered birth certificates, some relatives who just 'disappeared' and some really, really weird cod's (cause of deaths). There are a few other jaw-dropping revelations and stories that I won't share here. Mom would be aghast that I've shared this much already! lol....Maybe I'll write a series of books one day about all the characters that build the base of my family tree. They make for some very interesting stories.

When I was a kid, these cemetery walks used to bore me to tears, but now I'm glad that Mom did all that research. It's pretty cool to look over your life as the pieced together quilt that it is. Every piece is not always pretty and the edges maybe a little (or very) ragged and frayed, but every piece fits together and it makes us, eventually, who we are....