My Grandma is a huge family history buff. She travels all over the country and calls people she's never met to find long lost ancestors' names and information. Last year she requested that her posterity write a simple personal history as a Christmas present to her. That little assignment was quite exciting to me.
A year or two earlier I received a book about my great-grandparents as a gift from my mom. I tried reading it once or twice, but was never interested enough to make it very far. One Sunday, however, I decided I should read it to tell my mom I'd read it. I began to read, and to my surprise, I didn't want to put it down. It was very well written, a lot of work had gone into it, and I was learning things about my family I'd never known. It was delightful.
After reading that book I started writing my own personal memoir. I jotted down a few memories, but lost interest after the first day. So when my Grandma requested, I decided it was good to pick up where I'd left off. By the end of the day I had a 25 page rough draft! I've recently felt the desire to make it more complete. Sometimes I'll have random things trigger memories I didn't know existed. I need to write those things down.
My mom just finished her 30 page life history and sent it to us today. I enjoyed it very much. Though I've known her my whole life, I learned things about her I never knew. The moral of the story is, it's good to write things down. Make it easy for future posterity who may be interested in finding you.
2 comments:
I keep telling myself that my blog is an excuse not to write an official life history but when it comes down to it, it sure is nice to have a concise history of your predecesors. My grandmother wrote one a few years ago that was about 150 pages long all about her parents, my grandpa's family and her kids. She had it bound, illustrated with important family photos and presented it to the entire family. It's one of my prize possessions and has brought me a lot closer to her.
These kinds of things are really nice to have while the person is still alive. Good job on getting started on yours!
I keep telling myself my blog is my journal. My brother pointed out I really need to print out a hard copy of every post if I want it to count as that. There's no guarantee Google or Blogger will keep all our sites up and running forever.
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