Tomorrow my sister and I have an unusual appointment. Together we’re going to order a headstone for our paternal grandparents, Robert and Clara, who died back in the 1940s.

They died before either of us was born and for whatever reason, unlike my mother’s family, we didn’t know much about Daddy’s folks. 

I’d heard that Grandmother Clara died of cancer while my mother was pregnant with my sister. And the story of my grandfather passing away in a room he rented from my other grandparents, Nonnie and Poppie, made it into the family stories. But other than two half-sisters who lived away, there wasn’t much information about Clara, the grandmother for whom I was named. 

This journey began years ago when I googled my father’s name. My grandfather’s name popped up too. I was surprised because that side of the family was always a bit of a mystery and, to be perfectly honest, I kind of forgot about him and Clara.

A picture smiled back at me from the computer screen, and I saw the strong resemblance that laced its way from grandfather to my father and then to me. My sister is petite and lady-like and favored my mother’s side of the family. I, on the other hand, was the only one of his children who looked like Daddy. I was the tallest one in my class and had my daddy’s eyebrows. 

Who did my grandmother look like? I’ve never seen her picture.

Daddy spoke well of his parents but other than a name, I’m not sure if he shared much with the people he came from. He didn’t tell their stories. So, over time, they were lost. And when the stories and the memories they evoke disappear, it is like the person is lost as well.

I was visiting my parent’s grave one day when I suddenly thought about my ‘other’ grandparents. I knew through the internet that my grandfather was in the same cemetery. But my grandmother? I wasn’t sure.

The man at the cemetery office looked them up in his well-worn book. My grandparents were buried side by side and he offered to show me their graves. It was at that moment that I was flabbergasted to learn that they were only a few yards from my parents’ and grandparents’ plots. I had driven by them a hundred times, but I wouldn’t have known because they didn’t have a headstone. They were buried in an unmarked grave. That was about to change. 

“I wonder how they met,” Cousin Molly asked when I reached out to find out Clara’s exact birthday for the headstone we would be ordering. She was a cousin I didn’t know I had but connected through the one cousin I did know about. Cousin Lynne and I knew each other growing up but lost contact after high school.

I heard Lynne was in the hospital and decided that this was a time to reconnect. I hesitantly knocked on the door not knowing what to expect but she greeted me with a smile and a big “hello.” I was surprised. Even after a long illness her height, big bones and tall forehead mirrored my own. I resonated with this woman in the bed. I felt I had finally found ‘my’ people, my tribe. I’d found my place.

Cousin Molly, who looks much like Lynne and me, loves genealogy so it was to her I turned to find Clara’s birthdate. We had the month and year but not the day. It was Molly who asked the question about how my grandparents met. I not only didn’t know the answer, but I realized that there were so many things unknown to me about my father’s side of the family. I didn’t learn the stories and now they are gone. 

In the Old Testament days of the Bible, a stone was placed and a new name given at the site of a significant event. Maybe that is the source of putting a piece of rock on someone’s grave. It says, “This person was significant. This person was real.”

Headstones perhaps don’t carry the significance they once did. The practice of cremation and scattering ashes is well accepted. To my grandparents’ generation, however, a good death included a nice burial and a headstone. Perhaps they couldn’t get one then, but they will in the spring when the winter ground thaws, and the stone is installed.

I am not sure why this is important to me. I am not sure why placing a headstone wasn’t important to my father. For me, maybe it’s a sense of responsibility for the unknown tribe that I now realize that I am a part of. It feels good to honor my ancestors and I am grateful that my sister and I can see this task to completion.

People came before you and me and there are those who will come after us. We are one link in a chain whose beginning was farther back than we will ever know. The chain continues after us as well.

Do you know the stories of your ancestors? It sounds so formal, but those tales are hidden in memories of past Christmases or family holidays. Those tales are a glue of shared experience that helped create the person you became. There is strength in that glue, and it is important to see that your children discover it too.

And for the ones who follow, it is important to not only share those stories but create new ones as well. Be intentional because it is through those memories that you will live on.