Comments on: The Records of Our Dead

By: Julia

Julia — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:21:01 +0000

I had a YW leader who wrote a history of the last five years on every year ending with a 2 or 7. (I don’t remember which one her birth year ended with.) She wrote the review of the years based on her diaries. Then after she was done with that, she wrote what she called, “History Extra-The Things That Really Mattered” which covered things from the past that she didn’t write about at the time because they didn’t seem important, but as life went on she realized they were.

She shared several years of “History Extra” at a YW slumber party. We YW didn’t know it at the time, but she had been diagnosed with cancer a few months before that slumber party. She didn’t live to the next 2 or 7 year, but I still take comfort in the fact that there were things she did as a Beehive that were suddenly important in her 50s.

I am not nearly as good at journaling, partly because I spent most of my years growing up trying to pretend the past and present weren’t really happening. I find that many times when I am writing personal essays that I often use some of the same styles of storytelling that she did.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 22:57:39 +0000

Yeah, that’s always frustrating. I wouldn’t mind – I would love it, in fact – if people wrote new histories or addenda or whatever, but leave the earlier versions intact!

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:57:52 +0000

We always got worried when we found my great-grandmother–in her 90s–going back and “revising” the personal history she had written decades earlier.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:24:07 +0000

Our being historians gets sticky in so many ways! Just at the funeral pall, though. After that we go home and write everything we can remember.

By: kevinf

kevinf — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:05:03 +0000

For here as at the funeral pall,
The failings mortal weakness brings,
We would not, where we might, recall,
But pass them by for better things.

Good genealogy advice, but bad history! Nice sentiment, though, as my wife and I plan to go do sealings with our ward tonight.