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"Where is the family fortune in gold and silver buried in the back yard?"
No. None.
Save one
My best friends son hanged himself. I would have loved to ask him what was really on his mind that would lead him to that decision.
As one who tried unsuccessfully 3 times, and his life was paralleling mine at his age thereabouts. So i felt i could understand what he was going through.
About 3 months prior to his death i suggested to my best friend that i meet with them and him to simply tell him my story and how far i had come in life having dealth with crap that led me down a path uncannily similar to his.
But, we will never know.
Other than that, no i dont think theres anything I'd ask that i didnt already ask while they were alive.
My dad served in WW1 as an infantryman in France as a member of the Rainbow Divison and was in heavy combat. I served in the US Army and we never talked about his experince or mine. My biggest regret.
Oh, you bet. I wish I had quizzed my father on why his mother wound up in a State hospital in Oklahoma, died and was buried there, 100 miles away from her husband. Both in Indian Territory. Why he and his brothers were denied to be added to the Choctaw rolls, whether they could prove their native heritage and why did they not get a lawyer. Why he was a "change of life baby" or the child of an affair or rape which was family lore.
Doing ancestry research brings lots for questions than answers.
Oh gosh, sooooo many things that in retrospect I wish I had asked about! But as a child it never occurred to me, and then as a teenager and even as adult I guess I was simply to absorbed in my own life to think about what theirs had been. One of many things I later came to kick myself about, bigtime.
One of my biggest regrets of many concerns my biological paternal grandfather. I always knew that my grandmother's husband wasn't my "real grandpa" even though I was taught to call him that, simply because his last name was different from ours. But I simply assumed that my real grandpa had died long ago. It wasn't until I was in my fifties and into genealogy that I discovered that he died when I was five years old. I also found a heart-wrenching letter that he'd written to my dad two years before I was born, showing that after years of estrangement my dad had reached out to him after marrying my mom and saying how happy he was and hoping they could meet up again. It brought me to tears... but there was no other letter. So I have no idea whether the contact continued and, even more important, whether he knew about me being born or whether he ever saw me in person (he was living two states away.) As it turned out, I am his only grandchild because my father's siblings either died young or had no children. For some reason it's incredibly important to me to know whether my grandfather knew about (or ever saw) me but there's no way I can ever find that out... because I never asked anyone who would have known. Reading his letter, I know in my heart that it would have been incredibly important to HIM to know he had a grandchild.
Another thing I wish I'd asked about -- but eventually found out on my own, many many years later -- was why I was given my middle name. I had always disliked it even since childhood and avoided using it on any documents, etc. Imagine my shock when, while digging through microfilm records looking for old vital records in a state that I didn't even know my dad's family ever lived in, I found the birth AND death records of a little girl who was my dad's only sister. She died at age four, when my dad was 12 years old. Her name was the same as my middle name. Even spookier: She and I share the same birthday! So it's clear that my dad must have insisted on middle-naming me after his little sister who died. Yet because I never thought to ask "Why is my middle name Ruth?" I had no idea of any of this.
I eventually tracked down the cemetery she was buried in, and learned that no stone or marker was ever placed. This upset me terribly and I arranged to have one placed. By that time my dad and grandmother were both dead, but if they hadn't been they'd have gotten one helluvan earful from me about never putting a stone or marker on my little aunt Ruth's grave. Even if it wasn't affordable at the time (1930), either one of them could definitely have afforded to do it later.
Then again, maybe Fate intended for me to be the one to do that. Who knows??
Last edited by BBCjunkie; 03-06-2019 at 03:19 PM..
I think about this a lot. I only knew one of my grandparents (grandfather) the others died earlier before I was born or when I was a baby.
Luckily I asked my only grandparent some about his family background. He even wrote it down for me in his neat cursive handwriting. I still have a copy of that letter he wrote to me long ago. As my grandfather got older, my grandfather liked to repeat some of the same stories of how he got in trouble as a kid. Usually funny stories. Looking back, I was somewhat annoyed with the repetition, but yet it helped me remember those stories better as the years have worn on.
I do like genealogy, but I have very few first-hand stories about my families' backgrounds.
Another thing I wish I'd asked about -- but eventually found out on my own, many many years later -- was why I was given my middle name.
Ha ha ha, you just reminded me of a funny family story. Like all my brothers and sisters I was legally given a long string of names (none of which I actually use, LOL). Supposedly they were to honor the members of my mom's family. But I could never figure out which family member was "Betsy." Was it a nickname? A cousin I'd never met?
Finally, after I was an adult, my mom told me. Betsy was.....
Ha ha ha, you just reminded me of a funny family story. Like all my brothers and sisters I was legally given a long string of names (none of which I actually use, LOL). Supposedly they were to honor the members of my mom's family. But I could never figure out which family member was "Betsy." Was it a nickname? A cousin I'd never met?
Finally, after I was an adult, my mom told me. Betsy was.....
the dog.
Ever see the Dick van Dyke show with Mary Tyler Moore when little Ritchie learned his middle name was "Rosebud", short for the parebts names and names they liked for a boy...like Richard Oscar Samuel Edward Bobby Ulysses David spelling out "rosebud"... Most of those are correct.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Not only death... but having those 'important' conversations before senility / dementia / accidents / strokes / family feuds...
Could be in the next 10 minutes (or seconds)
Live well, today.
Enable others to do likewise,
My heart bleeds for you who are daily helping / serving / caring for those with serious debilitating diseases and addictions.
There are many suffering through this (even for yrs), while most of us are breezing along through the precious few moments we have left in this life.
Carry on.
BTW, I could have never heard enough of my grandparents and co-worker's stories. I learned a lot from each of them!. Many of my co-workers were eastern bloc escapees.
I never thought too much about this until the other day I was watching a PBS program about finding where some people came from, info on their relatives, etc. I think it's an interesting program. Even tho I am not related to any of the people on the show, it often features pictures from long ago and I find them very interesting to look at. Also maps and how Europe was divided into different countries, etc.
I know almost nothing about my father other than he was born in England (not really sure where in England), and came to America in approximately 1917.
My mother's family..... almost nothing. Her parents were born in Wales, her sister and she had same father, and a step brother with a different last name. All born in USA.
So much information that I'll never learn now. In particular what people died from. I've been asked questions by my own doctor and am not able to answer as to whether I had this or that. Consequently, I seem to be the "first" in family to have had some diseases.
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