Another Gladys Box (Part One)

 These pictures are all kinds of out of order.  Bear with me.  

Second Sister discovered a box of things we believed to have been passed down from our Great-aunt Gladys, socked away in her closet since before I was appointed Family Archivist.  She promptly contacted me and Eldest Sister so we could see what kind of treasure we had.

I kept this felt bookmark-thing because it has my name on it. 

Turns out this Bible belonged originally to our great-grandmother Maggie!  

We figure it went to Gladys at Maggie's death, then possibly to our grandmother (Gladys's sister-in-law) and then to the granddaughter most known for photo albums and keepsakes.

There were two other Bibles, both in better condition than this.  No identification of ownership on them and they've been adopted by The Boy.

The Bible was crammed with newspaper clippings.  Most of the dates were in the 1920s.  A relative few could be connected to my tree, which were taped into the Family Tree Binder.  That gallon baggie up top holds the rest. 

The Bible in question and a few larger, flat keepsakes.

The box after the Bible-in-a-bag was removed.   

Ignore the messy apartment. 

One of the keepsakes.  James Cox ran for President in 1920, with FDR as a running mate!

Photo compare for possible identification.  

The larger ones were in the box, the smaller ones are known to be Arthur and Marian Parker.  

Another comparison for hopeful identification.  The center lady gave us Purkiser vibes, so here she is with some possible kin or even herself.  The known elements are Maggie Purkiser Parker (original owner of the Bible and our great-grandmother), Dora/Anna  Hayes Purkiser (Maggie's mother), and Lida/Lydia Purkiser (Maggie's sister).

One of the few identified photos in the box.  Maggie Purkiser.

Notice the different handwriting as the Bible changed hands.

The Dora on these pages is not Maggie's mother, but her stepdaughter.

*****

More to come... 

Remembering Our Dead

Graveyards have good associations for me: Visiting the graves of her husband and son with my beloved grandmother, sledding at the rear of the Settler's Cemetery.  I found them tangible history, a solid reminder that those things happened to real people.  They're an excellent place to go if you just want to be alone and think - most people who see you will assume you are mourning and respect that.  

The family plot has gotten crowded in the years since I visited with Mamma.  In the intervening years, she was interred there.  Others were.  I used to think there was something wrong with me because, when I go there, the only memories that return to me are of Mamma.  Looking at Mother's headstone, for example, might bring back memories of the funeral.  No rich, full memories.  The family plot is a Mamma place and it doesn't matter who is buried there.

I find the memories come to me more in daily life.  A patch of daisies or a song on the radio evokes them more than a slab of marble with a name engraved.  I once wept in the grocery store over a display of Kit-Kat bars, for a man whose grave I've never even seen.  But in the graveyard? Not so much. 

Years ago, I made the decision to donate my body to science.  Explaining to one of my minions that this decision meant I'd likely have no grave, at least not one chosen by the family, she asked where she was supposed to go to remember me.  I gave her examples, but I know that when the time comes, she won't have to make any effort to remember me.  

She'll be weeping in the Barbie aisle over a woman whose grave she's never seen.  Because graves are for formal occasions and remembering our dead, really remembering them, is informal.  

Who Are We To Judge?

Humans judge.  It's just something we do, and I accept that fact.  Maybe it's even part of our evolved instincts.  I'm not up on my soap box today about normal day-to-day judging.  I'm here to clarify a few things about The Pearly Gates.  

Prince Phillip died the same day as rapper DMX.  Actress Kerry Washington said something on her social media about the two of them meeting at the Pearly Gates and caught (no pun intended) Holy Hell for it.  Apparently, Phillip would not be there because he was a racist.  DMX would be there because he was a Good Christian.  

RANT 1: 

Even when I was a Good Little Christian Girl, I did not believe it was my place to decide who was and wasn't going to Heaven.  I believed that was God's job.  I believed that if you sinned, it was between you and God to sort out.  So... a mighty presumption on the part of all these people.   

DMX had more than a dozen children, only four of which were born to his wife.  That makes him a fornicator and possibly an adulterer.  Adultery is one of the Top Ten Sins.  Fornication is mentioned often in The Bible as a sin.  We could also talk about his addiction issues vs that whole body-as-a-temple thing, but I'm not going to attack a fellow mental health patient.  

Phillip was a racist, at least by modern standards.  There's no denying that. Many Biblical passages have been interpreted to support the notion of racism.  The first that comes to mind is the Curse Of Ham.  Many sects of Christianity used Ham's Curse to justify slavery and opposition to racial intermarriage.  By that thinking, Phillip's bigger sin would have been welcoming his grandson's mixed-race bride into the family (as she has gone on record he did). 

But as I said, that's between them and God.  Not my call. 

RANT TWO:

The Pearly Gates are often seen in popular culture as a death metaphor.  One of my favorite comics is three clerics, one from each major world religion, standing before a pagan goddess at the Pearly Gates.  It makes me giggle every time. 

Popular culture tells us that the dead stand before St Peter (not God) at the Pearly Gates.  It makes sense that Phillip and DMX would meet there.  Them meeting there just means they died about the same time.  It doesn't mean that either one is going to get wings. Peter still has to check the list, like a bouncer at an exclusive nightclub.  Peter.  Not you, not me, not even God. 

RANT THREE:  

Both these men had faults.  They were human beings, after all.  Both these men leave families who should be allowed to grieve without the entire world sitting in judgement.  

Tammy

I generally try to avoid using names in my blog and this one's gonna ramble.  But bear with me, please.

At the end of March, my niece was hospitalized.  Her thigh was swelling to the point of stretching the skin, maybe splitting the skin, I'm not sure.  Her recurring back pain was unbearable.  This is the last time any of the family saw her, because of COVID-19, excepting a brief visit her husband managed to talk them into allowing.  Tests were run and a diagnosis of cancer given, in the lymph nodes, a few internal organs, and her spine.  We don't have a specific prognosis.  We just have a woman in her early thirties, in hospice care.

Tammy has two children.  She has a mother, a sister, a husband, and friends coming out of the woodwork.  She has a huge extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins.  She isn't perfect, of course, being a mere human.  None of us are.

Tammy and her sister spent pretty much every weekend at my place, from the time they were in diapers until adulthood.   We rose on Saturday morning and took my grandmother to the grocery, where she would fuss over and spoil them as great-grandmothers do.  Often there was another cousin or two in our group.  Once we had Mamma back home and we failed to sneak out without her forcing gas money on us, we hit the public library and then to a cousin's house.  That was Saturday.  We aren't so close now as we were then.  As we each grew into the woman she is today, our interests diverged and we drifted apart as people do.

I'm not mad about the COVID-19 rules, even if I think they should be bent for Tammy's situation.  I understand all that "needs of the many" stuff.  I have friends and family of every stripe appealing to whatever higher power they believe in.  Barring an outright miracle, those prayers and vibes might only be giving us comfort, but I'll take it. 

Anything that can do this to a woman who just wants to feed her kids and play in the rain should not exist.  I'm so angry on her behalf and hurting on my own.  My Brown-Eyed Girl is slipping away and there's nothing I can do.  Except be there for the rest of us and that feels like so little.

Triggered

I've seen a meme of C-3PO shutting down after Luke and Obi-Wan start talking about Luke's father labeled "Triggered".  On one level, it struck me as funny.  On another, thought provoking... can an artificial life form be triggered in that sense?  But..  The maker of the meme was mocking the mentally ill!  What a horrible person!

I once got an email urging me to boycott the T-Shirt I was actually wearing.  It was, like the meme, mocking the mentally ill!  Those who made it, those who laugh at it, and those who wear it are all horrible people!

Today I was reading a news story about a famous murder case and the comment section was full of condemnation for the reporters.  By writing a story which sells (the entire purpose of most mass media), they were propagating the horror the victim's family has gone through.  This struck me as very like the reaction to the meme and also quite hypocritical.

Why hypocritical?  Two words: Nine.  Eleven.

Every year on that date, one of the most horrific things that ever happened on American soil gets revisited ad nauseam.  This is a very real psychological trigger for countless people.  To this day, I can still hear the voice I think of as the "Oh my god" lady.  

In 2011, I was working in the Discharge Office of a local hospital.  I collected co-pays and screened patients for possible bill assistance.  I also sat less than fifty feet from a television I could not turn off, one that replayed the footage repeatedly for weeks after the event. Thank my god, I couldn't see the screen, but I could hear it.  "Oh my god" lady and all.

I was fortunate.  My nephew was on his honeymoon in the DC area, but he wasn't near the Pentagon that morning.  I didn't know anyone who died that day.  I may not even know anyone who knew someone that did.  But thousands of us are walking around with psychological scars simply from witnessing it on the television.

The only way to avoid it is to pull the plug on everything, including your phone.  For those of us who work or go to school, that isn't possible.  The same people who get mad over a meme, a T-shirt, a news story, are getting mad if you neglect to trigger the thousands of victims of 9/11.  Social media, including emails and text, is flooded with detailed photos of the towers going down.  The mass media runs commemorative stories, usually with the same detailed photos or (worse) video.

The C-3PO meme is mocking those who think everything they don't like is a trigger.  My crazy aunt T-Shirt is whistling past the graveyard.  I will continue to enjoy those things at least as long as giving me a week's worth of nightmares every fall is encouraged.  God only knows what it puts those with real trauma from 9/11 through.

Second Mom

Well, that day is upon us once again. Social media is overflowing with "Repost this if you love your mother" and "God couldn't be everywhere, so he made Mothers".  Advertisers tell me my mother wants jewelry and chocolates and flowers on her special day. We should always appreciate, but often that becomes taking for granted, so we have a holiday to remind us.

I did not have one of those mothers.  My mother did a lot of things very wrong.  She did have good qualities. It was from her I learned to respect other cultures (Specifically, American Indians, but one thing leads to another.)  She struck terror into the hearts of teachers she felt were dealing unfairly with her children. But the fact is, she should never have been a mother. She simply was not equipped for motherhood.

She did, however, have one of those mothers.  Mamma (pronounced Mam-ma) filled in the gaps to the best of her ability and I worship the ground she walked on.  And there was another, the woman I call my Second Mom.  Not a stepmother (I was never allowed to like her) but the mother of a friend from school.  After over twenty years, that friendship imploded, but Second Mom never turned her back on me.

Both Mamma and Mother are dead now, but every year Second Mom gets a card for Mother's Day.  Even though I was past puberty when I entered her life, she did for me the things a mom should do.  The things Mother didn't do. She helped me through where Mother didn't.  I wish I could see her more often, but circumstances prevent that.

Please, if you comment publicly on this blog, refrain from spewing venom in Mother's direction. This isn't really about her.  It's about Second Mom and how much she still means to me, nearly a decade after I had to walk out of her life for all intents and purposes.

Respecting the Dead

I find it very strange that, given my interest in history and genealogy, I don't hold a graveyard in the same high regard others do.  Or maybe I should say a grave.  Yesterday my sister and I drove past a cemetery where a friend was buried and she asked if I wanted to stop.  I said no and she told me how she stops whenever she is in the area to see him.

I get that she doesn't mean that literally.  I, too, have stopped to see my loved ones that way.  And I love a cemetery.  I think of cemeteries as tangible history.  I could wander one for hours, even if none of my people were buried there.  But I do things others consider disrespectful.  I walk across the graves and sit on the headstones - when I'm dead, you may feel free to do the same to mine.  I've been given grief for taking a shortcut through a graveyard instead of driving on 'real' roads.  

What I do see disrespect in is the folks who 'walk' their dogs in the graveyard.  The ones who take things off the graves - flowers, trinkets, whatever.  The difference is simple - these things are important to someone.  To steal from someone or poop on what is important to them is blatant disrespect.  You know perfectly well you shouldn't do it and you also know you'd be angry if someone did it to you.

I suppose that's the difference. I suppose it all goes back to the Golden Rule.

Anyway, it is odd.  I love a graveyard, the older the better.  But I also don't understand the problem when a cemetery is abandoned.  Clearly, whoever loved these folks has moved on.  The cemetery has outlived its purpose - to comfort the living.

Anyway, it is odd to love history and genealogy, yet not to buy the idea that a graveyard is sacred ground.  Each individual grave is sacred ground to someone, yes, but that's an entirely different matter.