We have met very few of our ancestors – just the few with whom we have shared, or are sharing, time on earth. For those we have met, our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and perhaps one or two great grandparents, we have only memories of what they have told us or what has been told about them. Nearly all, if not all, are from oral conversations and stories. Little, if anything is written down. A few may still be around to tell us stories they have heard or to fill us in on a few details, but the older we get, the fewer and fewer of the sources are left. As we neglect collecting these stories, we allow a lot of our family “tribal knowledge” to pass away with the generations before us.
With ancestors who have not been our contemporaries, most information, except legal documents, are lost. There is little left behind to learn anything more than when and where they lived, or if they participated in a history-making event. For most of our ancestors, the only information available is a precious few vital statistics on a census, taken by strangers, and often misspelled or otherwise inaccurate, or records of transactions of temporal business. Some left wills where they made their wishes known about the distribution of their earthly leftovers. But few left journals or diaries in which they communicated something about themselves to future generations. Many of them couldn’t read or write.
We don’t know each other very well either. It’s unfortunate that we care little about what our parents think while we are growing up. As they get older, we are uncomfortable gathering information about their early years for fear that we might have to admit that they won’t be around forever.
Of course, the stories of events in their lives are not usually of great historic importance. And there may be things they do not want us to know. What is important is that we get to know them, not the nitty gritty dirt that makes them so much like us. If we happen upon negative information about them, we ought to recognize that we’re not that much different – we’re all messed up. (Romans 3:23, & context).
Objects passed down from our ancestors are nice to have and may be a treasure in the sense that they were owned, handled, and used by them. But they are still silent and lifeless objects. Writing, on the other hand, carries and preserves thoughts from the mind of one generation to any future generation who cares to read it. How precious it would be to have the expressions of thoughts and cares of some of our grandparents.
Personal letters may exist that might talk about events that were going on in the family at the time. And, we may have a few recordings made in recent years that should be digitized and transcribed and preserved for the family.
The point? There are several. First, do what you can to collect and preserve what information is still available. Conduct and record interviews with family members – of all generations still living. Encourage families to get their memories written down and shared. StoryWorth is a good starting point, not only for older generations, but for “mid-life” generations. Eric and Jenn set us up with StoryWorth for our birthdays this year. Every Monday morning we get an email with a new question about our life that we are to write about. I’ll have to admit that it’s easy to get behind on the questions, but they are still there to manage in spurts. At the end of the year, StoryWorth puts it all together into a hard bound book. What a treasure for the family.
Whether it’s through a tool like StoryWorth, starting a notebook, or whatever it takes to start writing your own story or autobiography, start doing it. You may not feel significant enough for an autobiography. Our lives don’t need to be filled with history-making events to carry interest to our offspring. While you’re at it, write to your loved ones to express your appreciation of them. Encourage them. Challenge them. Pass along what you have learned about life. They may not care now, but many of them will wish they knew more about you after you’re gone. So, write about your feelings, beliefs, day-to-day life, etc., etc., etc..