Wednesday: aunt passed away
Nov. 16th, 2022 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI got a text from a cousin asking when an aunt was born in the context of she had passed away. That was news; I got the official call from my dad this evening when I was out for my long walk. Aunt M. was a lifelong Jehovah’s Witness who was a missionary when she was young, and her two sons also served as missionaries and/or at Bethel over the years. Decades ago, M. and her younger son stopped in the Netherlands to look up M.’s father’s family in Friesland, while on the way to visit M.’s older son who was then serving as a missionary in Georgia (not the one in the US). They spent the afternoon with J. and A. in Veenwouden, and the story went round the family in the US. When I had a brief stop in Schiphol returning from a visit to my sister who was living in Warsaw some years later, I noticed that everyone looked and sounded like family and determined to return. I contacted M., and got the info for the family in the Netherlands, and went up to visit them in February of 2002. J. and A. were so welcoming, and their home in Veenwouden was so comfortable. They took me to see the church in Achlum and the monuments in the churchyard. We visited Harlingen and went to Ameland. I drank Nobeltje and had an absolutely lovely time looking through photo albums and hearing the story of their lives. Their sons reached out to me and after an initial bit of suspicion, they, too have been delightful and kind and wonderful family to me. So while M. has not been a part of my life since I left the organization in 1994, I have fond memories of her home when I was a child — she was a good cook, and she and her husband bought lots of toys for their kids and they were shared with us when we visited, and there was far more joy in their home than any other house I spent time in. And I am very glad that M. re-established contact with our Dutch family, however tenuous that contact was for her, it has been a sustaining source of joy for me.
I talked to my sister yesterday evening after I heard the news from our cousin. My sister was very sad; the death hit her hard. We talked a bit about it. My sister and M.’s daughter (who was never baptized as a JW, and so had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with her family of origin, whereas as ex-JW’s, my sister and I have effectively no relationship with our family of origin) were for a time close in their teen years, and as with many relationships among young people in the orbit of JW’s, it was problematic.
My cousin reached out because she didn’t really know the birth order / birth years of the siblings of her dad and mine and the aunt who passed. It is a little odd being the repository of so much family knowledge as a result of the genealogy hobby, but I’m happy that I can be of use to those I love.
R. and I went to Woods Hill Table for dinner.
I had a delightful convo with J. I also had a delightful zoom with I.
I walked with M.
I talked to my sister yesterday evening after I heard the news from our cousin. My sister was very sad; the death hit her hard. We talked a bit about it. My sister and M.’s daughter (who was never baptized as a JW, and so had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with her family of origin, whereas as ex-JW’s, my sister and I have effectively no relationship with our family of origin) were for a time close in their teen years, and as with many relationships among young people in the orbit of JW’s, it was problematic.
My cousin reached out because she didn’t really know the birth order / birth years of the siblings of her dad and mine and the aunt who passed. It is a little odd being the repository of so much family knowledge as a result of the genealogy hobby, but I’m happy that I can be of use to those I love.
R. and I went to Woods Hill Table for dinner.
I had a delightful convo with J. I also had a delightful zoom with I.
I walked with M.