Ok it was like this….
If you’ve been doing genealogy for a while, and sometimes it doesn’t have to be that long, you know that you either are told or discover family secrets along the way. For me family secrets aren’t a big deal. I was never a gossip so if I find out anything I don’t run around telling everyone what I’ve found out. It’s all about getting the family story correct not about the skeletons I discover along the way.
My Mom was always interested in my work on our families. She was the one I went to with, not just the secrets, but all the things I found out about our family. With Mom you always knew when you’d found out something juicy because she’d always say; Ok it was like this …
I often wondered why she just didn’t tell me that stuff, why I had to find out the hard way. But I guess if you want to look at it in a positive way you realize that she never took away the thrill of discovery and she was honing my sleuthing skills.
In the fall of 2010 my Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s but prior to that I knew something was wrong because; for one thing, when I would ask a question about the family dynamics she started to say; “I don’t know”. She had always known before.
I miss those family history conversations with my Mom. How I long for one more;
“It was like this”
