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A Story To Tell
by Val Atkinson
Article ID: 38, First Published: February 2007A STORY TO TELL
When my niece became engaged, she had very firm ideas about the type of wedding she wanted.
Her dress would be modest and unrevealing with sleeves, and beadwork on the bodice.
She would walk up the aisle veiled, in the tradition of old English weddings, and her husband would raise her veil for their first kiss as man and wife.
She soon discovered there is opposition in all things!
- No shop in her town had such a dress
- No one knew of such a shop and very few were interested
- Nothing online in the whole of England
She became a woman with a mission to track down the dress of her dreams, and eventually found it via a website in USA.
It arrived, as beautiful as she expected, only needing a little alteration, and became known to the tailoress as ‘The Dress with the Sleeves’. It was in all ways unique.
She said: “Why do you want a dress with like this? No girls these days wear wedding dresses with sleeves and high necks.”
My niece said her body was private, not to be shown off to everyone, and after a silence came the reply, ‘Joanne, I agree. You should not flaunt your body to the world, only flaunt it to your husband!’
And so Joanne walked down the aisle according to plan, and her veil was lifted for the first kiss just as she intended.
Later, I said to her husband, ‘Can you describe how you felt as you saw Joanne walk down the aisle towards you?’
He thought for quite some time and then said, ‘No’.
It was in fact beyond description.
Now what, you’re asking yourself, has that story to do with research?
Well, Joanne and her husband stand on the threshold of life together, but one day they will be someone’s ancestors, and all ancestors should be 3D real people and not ‘flat packed’ cardboard cutouts.
On the family tree will be the date of their wedding, 3 June 2006, but that date has a story to tell, and Joanne’s descendants will want to know it, and they are entitled to know it.
Some of them might wear that dress as a family heirloom, and honour their 3rd great grandmother who moved heaven and earth to get it!
Family Life is
- A collection of real stories and anecdotes that happened to real people
- A kaleidoscope of genuine mind pictures
- Extraordinary memories linked to the real but ordinary people who helped make them
Genealogy research is facts, a sort of cardboard flat-pack of names, places and dates.
For 100% success in the research field, there has to be a marriage of research and the elements that make up family life. They need to be joined and become as one.
In a previous article ‘Descendants SOS’ I talked about the responsibility we have, as descendants who will one day be ancestors!
We need to avoid being like our ancestors who didn’t consider us at all, and left no trails to follow.
They never gave a thought to becoming ancestors with anxious descendants searching for them.
But we are different.
We are ‘Proper Descendants’ thinking about becoming ‘Proper Ancestors’.
We will make is easy for our descendants to know us as 3D people and not as cardboard flat packs.
We are not average people, because we know how to prepare to become ancestors.
We ask ourselves these questions:
- How researchable am I?
- Will I make the kind of ancestor I wish I had for myself?
Personally, I’m totally dedicated to leaving a trail a child could follow.
I’m a prospective ancestor any descendant would die for, if you’ll excuse the pun.
My descendants may not want the journals, diaries, holiday accounts, annotated photo albums, boxed and dated negatives, filed certificates, floppy discs of this and that, but they’re ready, and they satisfy a need in me to be available for my descendants, to be ‘there’ when they need me.
I don’t want to be a gap on a page or a ‘circa birth date’ person.
REMEMBER THIS. You are the future ancestor of your unborn descendants.
TRUST ME IN THIS: You have a story to tell. Please tell it.
History is made through the dignity given to the quiet tales of ordinary life. They become extraordinary in the telling. And so I encourage you to become the ancestor your descendants long to have.
