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A Simple Cemetery Visit
This past weekend I returned to my hometown and visited the cemetery where so many of my family members are buried. I usually visit every month or two, but this time, it had been about six months since I’d been back. Visiting the cemetery was ingrained in me as an important practice when I was quite young. My dad tended to not visit often. He would say he “visited everyday” in his heart, which I found to be just as meaningful. Others in my family treated it as a bit of a ritual for honoring loved ones. Having lost my mom at such a young age, I often walked over…
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Time flies, and all that…
Time flies, and all that… Actually, in my case, time slogged through 2023… A lot happened as I faced multiple unexpected diagnoses and learned how to address each of those diagnoses. In 2023 I did also enjoy arts and cultural events, and embraced the great times with family that arose through the year. My husband and I also got to a few cemeteries – we drove through Monsey, NY on a return trip from seeing our daughter and stopped at his dad’s cemetery. I also got to my parents’ sites a few times. But I obviously fell way behind in blogging! This post is just a catching up, hi it’s…
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Assumptions About Given Names
There are many issues surrounding surnames and their variations when doing genealogy, but we can also encounter a lot of assumptions about given names, or first names. To arrange for my dad’s footstone from the VA, I had to provide a few documents to verify his service in the US Army. One of these documents was the DD 214. On this document my dad’s name was listed as Lawrence John Brill. Let me say, this was all kinds of wrong… For most of my dad’s adult life he dealt with the effect of one mistake that was made when he enlisted in the Army. His given name was always Larry.…
