Spoke to an attorney today whom I've known for some years. In conversation, found some connections that I wish I could share with my dad, who adored finding out you knew people who knew people who knew....
I told a friend at work, who at least appreciated the connections and discovery and thought it was neat.
In absence of my dad, as recently as a year ago, I would have told my mother. I can't do that now. At best, it's too hard to create context; at moderate, she says my recollections are wrong and disagrees, and at worst? At worst, I hit some nerve of tender memory, she becomes angry that I have it wrong, and tells me how it REALLY happened and relives all the emotions about it. So yeah. I don't do that anymore.
I've not done any work on organizing Dad's genealogy information, and am not sure that I ever will. I felt guilty about that for a long time. I've come to realize, though, that it's okay; if someone steps forward to claim the information, I'll be happy to share. If no one does, then his efforts were not wasted. He enjoyed every update, every entry, every nugget of information he gathered about his ancestors, his generation, his progeny and theirs. Every family reunion had Dad with a notepad and pen, asking questions of the new parents, newlyweds, and everyone who had additions (or subtractions) to their family in the year or more since he'd seen them.
The same goes for his photographs; I'm collecting them and perhaps someday will go through them. Perhaps I won't. He enjoyed the process of taking pictures, of curating them, and in later years photoshopping them into attractive displays with text identifying those in the picture and the date and occasion. We treasure them. But none of us wish to take up that task. I'm feeling less guilty about that than I used to. I simply don't have time anymore for all that guilt I used to carry.
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