The Archives

I'm spending some time in Colorado Springs with family in anticipation of assisting my niece in her drive back to Ohio at the end of the week.  One night I was feeling restless and stayed up way past a normal sleep time wandering around in the archives of my past.  Using the computer for assistance I think I found out more than I was expecting.

Is this strange or not...

I decided that someone I knew a few dozen years (lifetimes) ago was dead.  I know, odd thing to make an assumption about, but I had my reasons.  So I decided I would start checking obituaries.  I didn't find the person I originally set out to find through the obituaries, but I did find that my cousin had died about 3 years ago and I believe her mother, my aunt, is also deceased.  It should make me sad about my aunt, but she was my mother's sister and actually I am sort of happy that they are together again.  I find comfort in that.  As for her daughter, my cousin, she had MS and lived 25 years longer than she was "supposed" to, so I don't find her death shocking or untimely either.  Perhaps the most unsettling of any of it is that my brothers and I are truly the "older generation" now as our ancestors have now all gone before us.

As for the others I was looking for in my mental archives, I found some of those people through other methods, apparently alive and happy which is a good thing.  The road was a bit circuitous, but I've always been good at chasing clues.  The last question I have is about a child of one of these friends.  One child seems to be absent from the present information and I have one of those gut feelings that he may have been a war casualty.  So sad if true.

So I think I'll close the door to the archives for now having peeked into the lives of people I knew so long ago and carry on as usual.  I wonder, am I the only one so fascinated with my own past and the eventual destinations of those I once knew and cared about? Or do others open their archives and examine their histories and wonder...?