Now that everybody is in lockdown or home stay because of Covid-19 you have a great opportunity to write your family life story. Not only is it an opportunity - it is an obligation.
Your elderly members of your family could fall ill. With Covid-19. With something else.
They might develop dementia. Then they will not have the patience to listen.
So get started. While you have the energy. You can even interview them online.
What will your children or grandchildren want to know? What will they need to know?
1 Medical History
First, when they go to a doctor, or plan to have children, or take out medical insurance, they might fill out a form which asks what their grandparents died of. What runs in the family?
Medical history is sometimes easier to recall than you might think. First you have cause of death on the death certificate.
Secondly, the drama of the death, the shock of sudden death, or the long final illness, will be seared on the memory of family. They may recall it and keep repeating key details.
Sometimes the cause of death is unknown for a long time.
2 Quoting Steve Jobs -Join the Dots
Steve jobs said:
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
Note down everything your family said. However trivial. Like detectives investigating a scene of death, or a family house, everything, however small, must be noted.
1918 Flu
I had always read about the 1918 flu in history books but didn't relate to it because nobody in my family had died of it. We all had regular ordinary coughs and colds and flu in winter.
When I married and moved into my first home, my mother told me, "You must have a phone by the bed - so you don't have to get up when you are ill."
She was insistent upon it.
It was not until decades later, after she died, that I realised why, she had blinked so hard, clasped her hands, and sounded so high-voiced and agitated.
She had often told me about her uncle Nat, her mother's brother, who had gone to South Africa.
He married. But he died young. Mother's mother, Hetty, had phoned from London, England. Nat, in South Africa, had run downstairs, picked up the phone, said Hello. Then collapsed.
Hetty heard him say, 'Hello!' Then the line went dead.
What had happened? Hetty did not know.
Finally, days later, a sad letter arrived from South Africa.
I checked online how long a letter took to arrive. Airmail did not start until 1919. Letters arrived by sea mail.
The long-awaited letter Hetty received was not from Nat, but Hetty's widowed sister-in-law. Hetty wrote back to her sister-in-law. Hetty contunued for the rest of her life until the 1960s. My mother continued the correspondence. My mother told me, Nat's widow never remarried.
My husband and I are second cousins. Our mothers were first cousins.
I never knew what Nat died of. My mother died in the year 2000 and had never told me. She did not talk about the past. It was too upsetting.
I had dinner with my widowed father and my husband's widowed mother, Pearl. I was secretly compiling information to make Pearl a book about her life for her 90th birthday.
At each weekly dinner I asked her about the family. My mother's uncle Nat was the brother-in-law of Pearl's Mother Sarah. Pearl recalled that Nat had died of the flu. Penumonia, heart attacks and flue are common killers.
I didn't know which year Nat died until I got a family tree sent to me by a distant relative who had found me though an Ancestry website.
She sent me a long family tree, half of which was about a side of her family not related to me. Most of the family on my side I knew anyway. But there was one vital date. The death of my mother's uncle Nat in South Africa. 1918. He had died in the 1918 Flu!
Now I knew why my mother was so anxious about the phone by the bed. Her uncle was in bed, only with flu. He got up to answer the phone, ran down a flight of stairs, and died.
Gambling And Cards
Of course there were lots of happier times. My mother persuaded me to take up playing bridge - for social reasons.
But the other thing my mother insisted on was not playing cards for money. She and my father played bridge for many years, even more so after my father retired. She resisted the entreaties of friends who insisted that if you played for money, you took more care to play the right cards.
If I asked her why, she would say, 'My mother never gambled. We didn't have spare money to waste.'
Okay. Sounds sensible. Reasonable enough.
However, after at least ten years after my mother had died (in 2000) over dinner with Pearl (who died after 2010) cousins and uncles and aunts mutual to my mother and Pearl.
Of one set of cousins, Pearl said, "Aunty and uncle didn't have much money because they were bringing up the four children who had lost their father."
I asked, "What did he die of?"
Pearl blinked a bit, and hesitated. "He committed suicide. Put his head in a gas oven."
"Why? Was he unstable? Depressive?"
"Maybe. I don't know. He lost all his money. Gambling. The brothers used to play cards. I suppose that's why they had to take in the children. Because it was their fault he committed suicide. And they had his money."
Suddenly I remembered vividly all those conversations with my mother vehemently saying: Never gamble!
I was an only child. When I complained that I didn't have any brothers and sisters, she would say, "You are better off without them." That could also date back to the card playing and suicide story.
I also remember my mother telling me not to research the family history. She thought it was full of sad things you are better off not knowing.
However, knowing all these facts makes much more sense of my life and my family life and my mother. Everything from my being an only child to my mother's dislike of gambling.
I did not only write my family history. My next door neighbour asked me to record his family history and that of his wife because they were getting on in years.
I was happy to oblige my charming neighbours.
Like other authors, I cannot remember what I wrote.
Many of my books are practical books
.I phoned my father and asked, 'How many hours behind London is New York?'
He told me.
I asked, 'How did you get the information so fast?'
He said, 'It's in a book I have near the phone.'
I said, 'That's a useful book! What is it?'
He said, 'it's an old book. You wrote it. It's called Enquire Within Upon Travel and Holidays.'
This story has two morals.
1 Put all your information in a book for later. Whether it is how to crochet, recipes, or any other skill. in ten years time it will be handy.
2 Remember to record the jokes and conversations.
What will you find out? You never know unti you ask.
What if you don't like what you uncover? It all depends on your attitude. Many Australians have ancestors who were transported to Australia with criminal records. You might take the attitude that this shows that whatever your origins, you can make good. You might also reflect on how lucky you are to have a longer life expectancy, a welfare state and the internet.
Anne Frank wrote a diary. She was in permanent lock down, worse than we are nowadays.
She had not a single reader. She disguised the names of the people she wrote about. Her book went on to become a best-seller. When she started her journal, and when she ended it, she had no idea that she would become world famous. Just a dream. She wrote, I want to go on living even after my death. She did.
if you are shy about revealing your family history, you can disguise it in a novel. If you need encouragement to get started, in the month of November authors worldwide buddy up and write a minimum number of words a day so that by the time they reach the end of the month they have a novel. Are you short of ideas for a novel? Just intreview your family.
Useful Websites
https://www.ancestry.com/
https://www.myheritage.com/help-center
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Novel_Writing_Month
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Author of twenty books. See Angela Lansbury's books on lulu.com and amazon.com
More stories in the next post.
Please share links to your favourite posts.
Your elderly members of your family could fall ill. With Covid-19. With something else.
They might develop dementia. Then they will not have the patience to listen.
So get started. While you have the energy. You can even interview them online.
What will your children or grandchildren want to know? What will they need to know?
First, when they go to a doctor, or plan to have children, or take out medical insurance, they might fill out a form which asks what their grandparents died of. What runs in the family?
Medical history is sometimes easier to recall than you might think. First you have cause of death on the death certificate.
Secondly, the drama of the death, the shock of sudden death, or the long final illness, will be seared on the memory of family. They may recall it and keep repeating key details.
Sometimes the cause of death is unknown for a long time.
2 Quoting Steve Jobs -Join the Dots
Steve jobs said:
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
Statue of Steve Jobs in Budapest, Hungary.
Note down everything your family said. However trivial. Like detectives investigating a scene of death, or a family house, everything, however small, must be noted.
1918 Flu
I had always read about the 1918 flu in history books but didn't relate to it because nobody in my family had died of it. We all had regular ordinary coughs and colds and flu in winter.
When I married and moved into my first home, my mother told me, "You must have a phone by the bed - so you don't have to get up when you are ill."
She was insistent upon it.
It was not until decades later, after she died, that I realised why, she had blinked so hard, clasped her hands, and sounded so high-voiced and agitated.
She had often told me about her uncle Nat, her mother's brother, who had gone to South Africa.
He married. But he died young. Mother's mother, Hetty, had phoned from London, England. Nat, in South Africa, had run downstairs, picked up the phone, said Hello. Then collapsed.
Hetty heard him say, 'Hello!' Then the line went dead.
What had happened? Hetty did not know.
Finally, days later, a sad letter arrived from South Africa.
I checked online how long a letter took to arrive. Airmail did not start until 1919. Letters arrived by sea mail.
The long-awaited letter Hetty received was not from Nat, but Hetty's widowed sister-in-law. Hetty wrote back to her sister-in-law. Hetty contunued for the rest of her life until the 1960s. My mother continued the correspondence. My mother told me, Nat's widow never remarried.
My husband and I are second cousins. Our mothers were first cousins.
I never knew what Nat died of. My mother died in the year 2000 and had never told me. She did not talk about the past. It was too upsetting.
I had dinner with my widowed father and my husband's widowed mother, Pearl. I was secretly compiling information to make Pearl a book about her life for her 90th birthday.
At each weekly dinner I asked her about the family. My mother's uncle Nat was the brother-in-law of Pearl's Mother Sarah. Pearl recalled that Nat had died of the flu. Penumonia, heart attacks and flue are common killers.
I didn't know which year Nat died until I got a family tree sent to me by a distant relative who had found me though an Ancestry website.
She sent me a long family tree, half of which was about a side of her family not related to me. Most of the family on my side I knew anyway. But there was one vital date. The death of my mother's uncle Nat in South Africa. 1918. He had died in the 1918 Flu!
Now I knew why my mother was so anxious about the phone by the bed. Her uncle was in bed, only with flu. He got up to answer the phone, ran down a flight of stairs, and died.
Gambling And Cards
Of course there were lots of happier times. My mother persuaded me to take up playing bridge - for social reasons.But the other thing my mother insisted on was not playing cards for money. She and my father played bridge for many years, even more so after my father retired. She resisted the entreaties of friends who insisted that if you played for money, you took more care to play the right cards.
If I asked her why, she would say, 'My mother never gambled. We didn't have spare money to waste.'
Okay. Sounds sensible. Reasonable enough.
However, after at least ten years after my mother had died (in 2000) over dinner with Pearl (who died after 2010) cousins and uncles and aunts mutual to my mother and Pearl.
Of one set of cousins, Pearl said, "Aunty and uncle didn't have much money because they were bringing up the four children who had lost their father."
I asked, "What did he die of?"
Pearl blinked a bit, and hesitated. "He committed suicide. Put his head in a gas oven."
"Why? Was he unstable? Depressive?"
"Maybe. I don't know. He lost all his money. Gambling. The brothers used to play cards. I suppose that's why they had to take in the children. Because it was their fault he committed suicide. And they had his money."
Suddenly I remembered vividly all those conversations with my mother vehemently saying: Never gamble!
I was an only child. When I complained that I didn't have any brothers and sisters, she would say, "You are better off without them." That could also date back to the card playing and suicide story.
I also remember my mother telling me not to research the family history. She thought it was full of sad things you are better off not knowing.
However, knowing all these facts makes much more sense of my life and my family life and my mother. Everything from my being an only child to my mother's dislike of gambling.
I did not only write my family history. My next door neighbour asked me to record his family history and that of his wife because they were getting on in years.
I was happy to oblige my charming neighbours.
I printed my favourite quotations from them on the back cover.
Like other authors, I cannot remember what I wrote.
Many of my books are practical books
.I phoned my father and asked, 'How many hours behind London is New York?'
He told me.
I asked, 'How did you get the information so fast?'
He said, 'It's in a book I have near the phone.'
I said, 'That's a useful book! What is it?'
He said, 'it's an old book. You wrote it. It's called Enquire Within Upon Travel and Holidays.'
This story has two morals.
1 Put all your information in a book for later. Whether it is how to crochet, recipes, or any other skill. in ten years time it will be handy.
2 Remember to record the jokes and conversations.
What will you find out? You never know unti you ask.
What if you don't like what you uncover? It all depends on your attitude. Many Australians have ancestors who were transported to Australia with criminal records. You might take the attitude that this shows that whatever your origins, you can make good. You might also reflect on how lucky you are to have a longer life expectancy, a welfare state and the internet.
Anne Frank wrote a diary. She was in permanent lock down, worse than we are nowadays.
She had not a single reader. She disguised the names of the people she wrote about. Her book went on to become a best-seller. When she started her journal, and when she ended it, she had no idea that she would become world famous. Just a dream. She wrote, I want to go on living even after my death. She did.
if you are shy about revealing your family history, you can disguise it in a novel. If you need encouragement to get started, in the month of November authors worldwide buddy up and write a minimum number of words a day so that by the time they reach the end of the month they have a novel. Are you short of ideas for a novel? Just intreview your family.
Useful Websites
https://www.ancestry.com/
https://www.myheritage.com/help-center
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Novel_Writing_Month
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Author of twenty books. See Angela Lansbury's books on lulu.com and amazon.com
More stories in the next post.
Please share links to your favourite posts.
