Month#5: Social

For the 12 Ancestors in 12 Months challenge for this month the word is “social”. I find myself talking about myself again but it’s because I am not a social type of person. I am an introvert to the nth degree, and this is a part of my personality that I really need to work on if I am going to be the person I truly want myself to be.

Why did this come about now? Because last night I learned that on 6 June 2022 one of my older relatives passed away. I feel horrible as my dad always thought to call her later in the day and with her being 88 he didn’t want to call at that moment in time and wake her up. When he couldn’t reach her I threw her name into Google and her obituary came up. And then I cried as I had met Hope on more than one occasion, and she was a lovely woman. My most recent meeting was when I went back to Pennsylvania in 2019 as she was excited to share with me the photo she had of her great-grandparents, my 2nd-great-grandparents. You see, Margaret Hope Dipko was my first cousin once removed on my dad’s side of the family.

As the memes on social media highlight, “a library has been lost”. Because of Covid I wasn’t able to get back to Pennsylvania and ask Hope questions I should have asked about my Wise side of the family. I thought she may have had answers about the Morgart side as I was semi-focused on them when I visited in 2019 but she was unaware. I wasn’t prepared for Wise questions and now I’ll never know (she attended the Wise Family Reunions with my grandmother years ago).

So, in honor of Hope, I am going to learn to get out of my comfort zone and begin talking to people. I’ll start out locally and begin interviewing those I know, (but do I really know them?) in order to practice on those I am not as familiar with. I’m going to make sure I interview my relatives and be more social and learn as much from those who are still here. Genealogy is a social hobby, how else am I going to fill in all those dashes, the important part of a person’s vital statistics.

Go be social. Talk to your relatives. All of them. You never know what kind of wonderful information is lurking in someone’s memory just waiting to entertain you with a fabulous story about their life. One of the best ways you can honor your relatives/ancestors is to keep their spirit alive by sharing the story of their life.