My last piece was fuelled by some recent research, suddenly made necessary by sad news of an ex and semi-distant family member, met probably only about five times, but still fairly relevant to the wider family scene.
Jilly had died, within two year's of her younger brother's death some six or seven years ago, and, somehow the news had not percolated through to me; change of addresses, perceptions and private grief being in the way of easy communication. It's hard to keep everyone in the loop when house moves are frequent, perceptions and emotions become so finely entangled, it's difficult for anyone to disentangle themselves from the spiral created, and that's just for the personality directly involved.
So finally the news was given to me, by a very friendly and concerned voice, which news I duly passed on to my children, for it was important to me that they were aware of this passing away. One of the lost relatives was in fact my son's godfather, thus a special link for him, although we had enjoyed little contact since I'd taken myself out of our previous family combination. I had attended the funeral of my son's godfather both for myself and my children, which was the last occasion on which I had met Jilly, whose death I only heard about this February. And because I'd fallen off the radar after my divorce, any news that might have come through from other sources earlier, simply didn't happen.
Oh what tangled family webs we do weave?
So now my son and I began to question the relationship between his father and his godfather....I'll call him Tom, without recourse to all relevant family names. What I mean here is stuff one wouldn't really know unless you were completely involved in the lives of every family link and connection, or lets say, you had recourse to question a family member, you knew without doubt, would be able to supply the missing information, simply because of their status.
We carried out separate research, which resulted in my son drawing up a new family tree which is most useful, to all of us, and he will send it to his father; but at this point we still could not discover the link which connected the cousins.
A call to my kindly caller to discover if there were unknown family names which might provide a link, and yes indeed there was. Our conversation took place at about 8.45 pm one Sunday evening and by 11.00 pm I was hot on the trail of the missing link. Shortly afterwards and slightly punch drunk from the thrill of it all, I was pretty certain of my facts and excitedly emailed my children to give them the good news, even though it would have to be checked again, just to make sure of all the facts.
This week I've been with my family in London and therefore, not really able to do any checking, but instead I've been with a new generation, which is truly scrummy and not to be missed for anything.
I shall be back home on Saturday and after my next piano lesson, will be free to get back to my research, to check my new found facts.
So there you are, the background to my recent family thoughts on poor connections, missing links and my regret at missing out on connecting more fully with family members, when the opportunity was there.
Family history is totally addictive, wholly time consuming, enjoyable and occasionally very frustrating.
I try to see myself as a missing link between then and now and the future and quite frankly, I cannot imagine ever not wanting to be involved with it.
Ah well, onwards and upwards.....!
Toodle oo
Daisy
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