Cleaning Mother's House
- Michael John Neill - It has been nearly a year since fictional genealogist Barbara
passed away. Her daughter Charlene reflects upon that year in a letter to
her friend Karen. Charlene truly has been busy.
Barbara is probably rolling over in her grave. Karen, As usual, my cards are late. It has been a busy year. We spent much of the year settling up
Mother's estate. The house sold well, but cleaning it took longer than we
expected. You are probably the only person who did not know Mother was a
genealogy buff. She told practically
every human she encountered. I'm
convinced that genealogy "nut" was the most accurate phrase. The
stuff was all over the house. The inheritance would have been enough to pay
for my new Mercedes had she not insisted on spending money on that blasted
hobby. I don't know why she couldn't
be more like Tom's mother. Nadine
spends her day doing needlepoint and watching reruns of 50s television shows.
Tom just does not realize how lucky he is, but men never do. My mother had to run off to cemeteries and
courthouses. She even went to a
conference in Davenport, Iowa, last year!
Can you imagine? Davenport,
Iowa! After she got back, she was so
excited about all that she had learned and all the fun she had. She was planning on going to another one
in California this year. Well the
grim reaper took care of that. Because of my promotion to head of knick-knack sales at
Garbageforless.com, I had not been home for several years. I was appalled to
learn that Mother had converted my old bedroom into her family history
"headquarters." My shelves
of Teen Beat and other magazines documenting my adolescence had been replaced
with old family photographs, copies of old documents, and something called
family group sheets. She even got rid
of the pants I wore to my first junior high dance. I cried at the thought. I could not bear to go in the room and be reminded that my childhood
had been stripped from me and replaced with an obsession with the past. I told the children that if they would
clean the room and prepare the items for the garage (should I say
"garbage"?) sale they could have the proceeds. I learned what true
entrepreneurs they are. Kenny stripped Mother's hard drive in under ten minutes. I kept hearing him say "GedCom is
GedGone… GedCom is GedGone…" I have no idea what it meant, but the
computer fetched a good price. Before
he unplugged the computer, he erased all Mom's floppy disks and downloaded
public domain games. He sold these at
a nominal price. Susan took the old photographs to a flea market and was able to sell
many of them. Some special labels had
to be taken off and we had to take them out of protective envelopes. Mother had written the names on the back
of many of them. At least none of
those pictures of depressing old dead people had our last name written on
them. I don't want to be associated
with such sour people. Mother had some type of old plat book -- whatever that is. Kenny tore
out the pages individually and sold them separately on Ebay. It was so clever. His dad said he got much more than if he
had left the book in one piece. Susan didn't tear the Bibles apart though. I thought that showed tremendously good sense. She's learning that not everything can be
marketed in the same way. The 1790
Bible brought her a good penny, but she couldn't get the one from 1900 to
bring more than fifty cents. She
donated it to a local church, and here is where I am so proud of her. We can write if off as a charitable
deduction. Someone had written what
they had paid for the Bible on the back cover. Susan converted that to 2001 dollars and will use that for our
tax deduction amount. I've already enrolled Susan in tax lawyer summer camp
this coming August. There was some old large certificate written on heavy paper. The silly
thing wasn't even in English, so why would Mother keep it? Kenny used the other side to keep track of
the things he had sold. Waste not,
want not. When we were finished we put the paper in the recycling bin. The kids put an old wedding dress from the 1870s in the washer to get
the stains out. It was terribly
filthy. The worthless thing didn't even survive the extra long cycle and the
half-gallon of bleach. It's doubtful
we can even use it for cleaning rags. The dress was in some kind of old trunk. I'm not certain what it was for, but it had a name stenciled on
the front in huge letters along with the name of a town. Susan gave it a good coating of red paint
and sold it as a toy box. The filing cabinets were emptied of their contents, as were the three
shelves of binders. Kenny got the
bright idea to shred the paper and sell it in bags as New Year's
confetti. The file folders were too
heavy to shred. The baby did not react well to any of this. She cried and fussed almost the entire time. Kenny thought she wanted tea, which made
no sense to me at all. As she cried, it
sounded like she was saying "family tee." She can't even talk yet and I think Kenny was hearing
things. The baby does look exactly
like my mother though, it's the oddest thing. The fussing didn't stop until she spit up an entire bottle of
strained prunes on my junior high jeans, which we did find in the basement.
They were ruined -- it was the one real loss. Now my past has really been taken from me -- magazines and all. Charlene Whether you have a child like Charlene or not, have you thought about what might happen to your genealogy
collection upon your demise? vvvvv Michael John Neill is the Course Coordinator at the Genealogical
Institute of Mid America (GIMA) held annually in Springfield, Illinois, and
is also on the faculty of Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Illinois.
Michael is the Web columnist for the FGS FORUM and is on the editorial board
of the Illinois State Genealogical Society Quarterly. He conducts seminars
and lectures on a wide variety of genealogical and computer topics and
contributes to several genealogical publications, including Ancestry
and Genealogical Computing. [This
article was copied from Ancestry.com.] |
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Please consider what might happen to your family history if you are not
careful with your records and information arrangements before your
death. Please contact the NBHA for assistance to
make sure your family history is archived
according to your wishes. The
museum accepts donations, and promises to celebrate the history of New Bremen
for posterity. Won’t you please
consider what you could contribute to our collection? Please consider the loss to future
generations if your memories are tossed in the trash. For more than thirty five years, the New
Bremen Historic Association has preserved our heritage proudly, with the
dedication of many committed volunteers.
Take the initiative to become involved, and learn the lessons of the
past to teach the young. If you want
to submit anything directly for The Towpath, please contact the Editor. |