OLD AGE

7 January 2022

So many people  talk about Ancestry.com and the wonderful things they find there.  I joined it many years ago when it wasn't so expensive and got a family tree started, but I didn't stick with it.

My cousin Peach got very into it.  She traced my mother's side of the family back to Scotland in the 1300s and traveled around the country looking for graves of our relatives.  She had a whole closet full of binders about the family, when she died, and had written a book about much of what she uncovered.

I've always been curious to check out my father's family, especially since I know almost nothing about them, since my grandmother didn't like his family so I never met any of my father's uncles and knew nothing about the family history. But the cost of membership in Ancestry was so expensive I never got back to it again.

A couple of years ago, I had a message from someone who was my great uncle's granddaughter.  Her grandfather was my grandmother's brother, someone else I knew nothing about.  We exchanged a couple of letters...she had information I didn't have and I had information (mostly photos) that she didn't have.  She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and her daughter was going to school at UC Davis, so we thought we would get together at some point.  But the time when we were going to get together, either I was sick or she was sick and we decided to postpone the meeting.  I never heard from her again.

But I do, from time to time, think about getting back on Ancestry and see if I can find her. 

I saw an Ancestry sale yesterday, 50% off the regular price for a month and so I joined...and marked my calendar to delete my account since it would cost me $100 if I didn't.

I'll tell you, I don't know how people do anything on Ancestry.  I found an article about someone in my family but I have to pay extra to get newspaper coverage.  I found the person who contacted me but apparently I don't have the right kind of account that will allow me to get her email address or send her a message.  I tried to upload a photo of my grandmother, but it won't let me access photos on my hard drive.

I did find one thing, though.  I found out how old my grandfather was when he died.

I remember the last couple of years before he died, how fragile he was.  I remember seeing my father guide him out of the car in front of our house when they came to visit.

I remember seeing how shaky he was when they put him in a home and we brought Paul to see him.

I remember how old he was but it wasn't until I went on Ancestry that I found out HOW  old he was -- when he died, he was a year younger than Walt.

And while I can't find the date of my grandmother's death anywhere I remember seeing her holding David, which means she was alive in 1972 and I don't think she lived much longer than that, which means that when she died she was my age

It really makes you stop and think about your age when you find out stuff like this.  There is no way I feel the way I remember my grandmother being before she died, and I certainly can't imagine my grandfather going out for a long bike ride every day and yet that's the age we are now.

Maybe that explains why I need my afternoon nap every day!