Unfinished Business

Two weeks ago, Jim’s mom and I spent the day at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. In the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, originally the luxurious Hotel Utah, (built in 1911), we saw 'The Craftsman', a film about Danny Sorensen. A little older than me, Danny has loved flying all his life, is an accomplished show pilot, and has hand-built two planes. The opening shot of the nose of Danny’s bright red plane, “Unfinished Business,” brought sudden and unexpected tears: David has sixty years of unfinished business.

And then, one of Danny's and Alynn's daughters developed a brain tumor at age four.

I admire the faith, courage, and wisdom of the Sorensens. And the aeronautical cinematography is stunning on the big screen. (I love airshows!)

In my Compassionate Friends group (a support group for parents and siblings who have lost a child or sibling to death), one mother described how her deceased son energizes her to live life more fully and do significant, hard things: "for Nick". His unfinished business has become her inspiration.

What’s your inspiration this week?

Genealogy Heaven

Early last Tuesday morning, I joined about 40 other passengers to board a Southwest plane to Milwaukee. We each got an entire row to spread out in. Almost as good as first class!

In order to save the $400 premium for travelling on President’s Day weekend, I chose 11 hours of travel time to get from Boston to Salt Lake City, via Milwaukee and Los Angeles (yeah, California). Have Kindle, will travel! I remained on the same airplane all day and had a unique experience in Milwaukee. After refilling my water bottle in the terminal, the gate agent waved me through to re-board the plane before the waiting new passengers. I walked down the jetway alone and directly into my chosen seat: no line, no waiting. What a feeling of power and privilege, to board before anyone else, without showing a boarding pass. (I’m easily amused.)

That afternoon I rented a car and drove to see Savannah and dear little Eliza, who are visiting Utah from L.A. (I practically flew over their apartment building, but they weren’t there.) The eagles were gathering (Luke 17:37) for a double baby blessing for Eliza and her month-younger cousin, Leo.

Over the next two days, I spent over eight hours at the huge Family History Library (FHL) on Temple Square.

I had no idea what to expect: over the last nine years, millions of records have been digitized and are available, free of charge, from home through FamilySearch.org. What could the FHL have to offer?

What I found bowled me over: several floors, each with a huge corps of experienced volunteer genealogists, eager to guide me to the next level of research.

A seasoned genealogist helped me find an image of my great-grandfather’s handwritten baptismal record, dated October 27, 1860, from Poznan, Prussia, now part of Poland. There are records going back to 1558.

Another volunteer, experienced in Lithuanian and Polish research, introduced me to research tools for Polish locales. Amandus Gustav Bruesch and his parents, Gottlieb and Justine, spoke German, but his birthplace, Poznan, is now a Polish province, 100 miles from the current German border. I’ve daydreamed about visiting the Bruesch homeland: turns out I’ll have to travel to the middle of Poland.

With family activities, I won’t be able to return to the FHL this trip, but I’ll be back. Imagine an entire building of seasoned genealogists, united in their desire is to share their expertise.

Georgette Dione Boucher, 1921 - 2018

Around 3 a.m. on Thursday, January 25, Georgette Dione Boucher died at age 96. I never met ‘Georgie’, but my friend, Diane, was her next-door neighbor and took care of her for many years. Diane loves to say that she was on her trike the first time she met Georgie, when the Bouchers moved in. It was a close-knit neighborhood, where Georgie and Diane’s parents and the other adults kept an eye out for all the children as they played outside with a freedom that's a rarity today.

Georgie never had children and her husband died many years ago. Diane took care of her like a daughter. All of Georgie’s needs: the headaches of house and yard maintenance, the complications of home health care, the intricacies of financial planning and organization, fell on Diane, who willingly served her. Diane did more for Georgie than many daughters ever need do for their own mothers.

After Georgie died, I met Diane at the Keefe Funeral Home to help her make arrangements. Unfortunately, I know about funeral arrangements. I planned the Funeral Mass and my friend, Amy, and I interviewed Diane and one of Georgie’s Canadian nieces for the obituary. I organized a women’s a cappella quintet to sing the closing hymn at the Mass at St. Agnes Church in Arlington Center

For five days I worked on the myriad of details that seem to pop up between the death and the funeral. I was grateful for the chance to help my friend, but it was exhausting. I looked forward to January 31, when the funeral would be over and I could relax.

What I didn’t anticipate was the emotional reaction when it was all over. The funeral was on Wednesday, January 31. On Friday, I saw my friend, Jen, at a craft store. Jen asked me how it went. As I told her about my week, I was amazed, incredulous that the funeral had only been 50 hours previous. It felt like a month ago. More accurately, it felt like it had taken a month out of my life.

I’d gladly volunteer for the job in an instant; I'm grateful I had the expertise and time to help my friend.

The emotional exhaustion was due to the personal subtext: my mother's, my father's, and David’s deaths, funerals and burials, the grief for all of these losses, a grief I still feel, and most poignantly for David, who died so young.

As I move onward in my life, I now experience what I couldn’t imagine at all: what it’s like to have a son who’s been dead for nearly 30 months. There’s a symmetry in that: he would have been 30 in October, and now it’s been 30 months. A month dead for each year alive.

I suppose it will always be a strange thing. How can my son’s body, once strong, vibrant, and alive, now be lying in the cold frozen ground of New England?