Why I Love Genealogy

There are many reasons I love genealogy.  It combines my love of history with my skills at being a sleuth and my training as a therapist.  It makes me feel like I'm part of a much larger family.  It introduces my to so many people.  It appeals to my need for completion and organization.  But something I rarely talk about is that it helps keep those who have died alive - at least to those of us who write and think about them.

Right now I'm confronted with the serious illnesses of several people close to me.  I'm talking about the kinds of illnesses that will ultimately lead to death, though there's no way of knowing how soon.  I am, of course, hoping it will be far into the future.  But when you are faced with life -threatening illnesses in your friends and family you feel fear, sadness, and a sense of impending loss.  You know that at some point, you will have to say a final good-bye.  And as you heal from your grief, you find that you don't think about those friends and family members quite as often as you once did.  It's not that you don't still love and miss them, it's simply the nature of healing.  Life moves forward and the days have a way of being occupied with immediate concerns.  And while you will always remember your friends and family who have gone, the next generations who did not know them as well, or at all, may not even remember their names. 

When you do genealogy, you spend a lot of time learning about people who have already died.  You may even spend some of your days - days that might otherwise be spent outdoors with your grandchildren, or barbecuing with friends - tromping around cemeteries, in search of dates for ancestors who have been gone many decades, possibly even a century or more.   My husband and I have done that on many occasions.  And these trips have not only paid off in terms of finding long lost ancestors, they have been an opportunity to reflect on those lives - those persons who came before you, some of whom had to exist in order for you to exist. 

Those trips to the cemetery, those days spent in libraries poring over old records, those hours upon hours in front of a computer screen reading census reports that are over 100 years old, make me keenly aware of all the relatives of mine who have passed on.  These relatives were not so different from me.  They went to school, married, had children, laughed, cried, mourned, rejoiced, got old, got sick, and eventually died.  And today, they have been forgotten by most of their descendants - except for some, including those who do genealogy. 

So that is one of the important reasons I will always love genealogy. It is more than a search for names and dates, records and newspaper articles. It is a way of remembering, a way of keeping my ancestors alive in my mind, as well as in the minds of other family members. 

One of my Brennan relatives, Ralph Brennan, was a war hero in WW II.  He died in 1944 in the Battle of Flavigny near Nancy, France.  To honor him, there is an inscription on the bridge where he died.  It reads:

"Men die two times, once on the day of their deaths, the second time when no one speaks of them.  By this gesture, we hope that Lt. Brennan will not die a second time."

By my work on this Brennan family history book, it is my hope that my ancestors, and all the descendants of Ned and Mary Fahey Brennan, will long be remembered, and will not die a second time.