Nostalgia

Nostalgia.  Is it odd to long to know a history that isn't your own?  To wonder about a life that led to your own but only indirectly impacted this life?  My grandfather died before my birth and I've always felt cheated by it.  I've been acutely aware all of my life, that I was the only grandchild that he never met.  I form a memory of him through stories and memories others have lent me, but I still wonder what he sounded like... what he would have told me, only me.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that the passing of a great woman, a woman my grandfather held in the highest regards, has rattled me a bit.  I've read letters that my mother has of their correspondence during WWII.  She was his sister-in-law, and apparently she was wonderful.  I know little more of her than the couple times I met her in person, and the warm letters she would send me every year after her receipt of our christmas card.  My cousin found this article in the local newspaper that she wrote a couple years ago about her war time contribution.  Reading it makes me proud.  What an amazing and painful time to live through.  What amazing things she watched happen to and around the world.

Not surprisingly, her death makes me reflect on my own life.  What would an article about my "war time contribution" look like?  Does any correspondence with my brother-in-law during his time in the desert even still exist?  In this time of instant communication, will anything tangible even exist to prove history? My history?

All the same, it is with a heavy heart that I bid Aunt Barb adieu.  And congratulations on a life well lived.