Fading Breadcrumbs

When I began this blog a year ago my intent was to lift up forgotten family stories that had receded into the hidden corners of history, preserving them by sharing them here. For several reasons, I started with my mother’s family. First, I didn’t know that much about her relatives apart from a few memories she had about her father and grandfather, and I was always confused about how her various cousins fit together. Second, once I found my grandfather’s scrapbook and began planning for my 1938 Project camping trip, I wanted to know the backstory of all the 1938 travelers, starting with my great grandfather’s immigration to western Pennsylvania from Sweden. For the last year I have had loads of fun researching, uncovering and following lots of Larson breadcrumb trails, and retelling as best I could the joys and triumphs as well as the tribulations and tragedies of those fascinating individuals who lived so long ago. The historical context they lived in and the artifacts left behind became important to me as a way of understanding who they were as individuals living in a particular time and place.

Which brings me to today. What I had not fully considered when I started the blog is the inevitable fact that not only can I not uncover all the worthy family breadcrumbs that exist in the world and bring them to life, but also that I might actually be witness from time to time to a breadcrumb trail fading away before my eyes. This happened recently and I decided to use this space to reflect on my recent experience when I stepped in to help my cousin David move from his third floor walk-up apartment, where he had lived for over thirty years, to a senior living apartment with an elevator where he will be able to age in place more easily. David graciously gave me permission to share his story and my reflections with all of you.

David’s Story

Over the last few years David, now in his 70’s, had frequently acknowledged the need to move to a more accessible living space, given his aging body and increasing difficulty with the three flights of stairs he was forced to traverse every time he wanted to go someplace. Inertia and indecision, however, became barriers to moving forward, and maintaining the more familiar status quo felt easier than making a big change.

The move became a front and center necessity after recent foot surgery in the fall of 2023. During the rehabilitation phase, which lasted almost two months, David could not go up and down stairs, which meant that he could not return to his apartment at all. Instead, he paid money he couldn’t easily spare for accessible accommodations at a local hotel. With his bank account draining quickly in the face of paying for two sets of living quarters, it was finally time to face the reality of his situation and move out of the old place for good before another crisis hit.

As is true for many of us facing big decisions or dealing with serious health concerns, David knew that he would need some help when it came to deciding how to go about navigating such a big transition. The complexities of getting to doctor’s appointments, assessing his overall situation, reviewing his finances, exploring available community supports, and making decisions about affordable places to move, were overwhelmingly difficult for him to manage and navigate alone, as they might be for anyone. Most of us have close family members or a network of friends who can step in during such times and provide the needed guidance and help. Parents. Siblings. Children. Nieces and nephews. For my cousin, none of those options exist. His parents are gone, and his only brother died just a few short years ago. These were the family members he had leaned on as he was growing up and making his way through his life, and now they were not here to help him with some of the most important decisions he had ever faced. Neither brother married or had children, which leaves David as the last person standing on his particular family tree branch.

David does have some close friends who did what they could to fill the role of his family after his brother passed, but the heavy lifting required to research and contact community agencies, visit potential housing options and negotiate rental contracts, and manage the complicated logistics of the move itself, proved to be a bit too much and more help was needed urgently. David called my brother, who didn’t bat an eye and jumped in immediately. Other cousins in the area were also notified and waited in the wings, ready to step in and help as they were able. My siblings and I did what we could from hundreds of miles away from where the action was unfolding.

Picking Through The Pieces of Yourself

After several whirlwind weeks of research and running around, David was able to secure a new independent living apartment that is affordable and seems to have everything he is going to need for the foreseeable future. Once he made his final decisions about what he could afford and where he would go, then came all the chaos of moving out of one place and into another. This was a massive undertaking because all of David’s life was contained within the confines of his small one bedroom apartment where he had lived for over three decades. I helicoptered in for one day (that’s a metaphor - I actually drove the three hours to get there and stayed for two nights) to help sort through the final boxes of “stuff.” Arriving several weeks into the moving process, I found boxes stacked everywhere, papers and books piled into corners, and evidence of hobbies, interests and activities over the years strewn about. A couch I recognized from my childhood that had been in my grandparents’ home was against one wall. I could see that it had reached the end of its life span quite a few years ago, as had most of the furniture that remained. Our task the day I was there was to divide what was left in the old apartment into either the decreasing pile of items that would be moved, or the increasing pile of items that would get tossed, donated or recycled. David, my brother Sam, and I got to work.

Some of the items that required sorting were connected to David’s involvement with a local railroad enthusiasts’ group, of which he was a founding member back in the 1970’s. Still in his possession were multiple copies of all the monthly newsletters from their beginning many decades ago, as well as other railroad memorabilia highlighting that important part of his life. David took his time going through all the piles, sorting the documents and items according to whether he wanted to move them to his new place, offer them to the organization as historical artifacts, or get rid of them altogether. I watched him as he (understandably) lingered over this task, periodically lost in the memories of his good times with these friends over the years.

There were many other personal papers and documents that had also never been thrown out. Many of these receipts, pamphlets, and brochures were tangible reminders of different activities over the years. Each triggered fond memories of his younger days, such as the time David tried skydiving (unsuccessfully, he tells me, although I was impressed that he even went up in the airplane that day), or the scuba diving classes he took in the mid-1970’s. These bits of paper were hard to part with, and I sensed the significance of those aspects of his identity that they represented as he wobbled between keeping them or shredding them.

The day was productive overall, and in the late afternoon we were ready to load all the boxes of saved stuff into our cars, drive over to the new location, and unload them. Fortunately, my brother had a sturdy appliance dolly to help with the multiple trips up and down the three flights of steps and out to our cars, and there was adequate space inside David’s new apartment to store the numerous boxes out of sight. Labelled and accessible, he can dip inside any of them at any time to revisit those memories that he decided to save.

Standing By As A Breadcrumb Trail Fades Away

David had lived comfortably at his old place, spending most of his work and social life outside of the apartment rather than bringing people into it. He is not really into entertaining, and lives a fairly minimal lifestyle, not needing much and not asking for much. That changed when his aging body and life circumstances forced him out of his quiet status quo and into a transitional period of rapid change and adjustment. It was no easy task for him to sort through and decide how much of himself he would take with him and how much of himself he would simply toss out. How does one make peace with the decision to part with a piece of yourself that has helped define you all or most of your life?

I couldn’t resist snagging these old books from the very early 1900s that David was ready to discard.

As I was going through the various boxes, it became apparent that I was not only getting a glimpse of David’s life, but also that of his parents, brother, and various other relatives who had passed on and whose treasures had landed in David’s possession, whether he had wanted them or not. Many of David’s papers, books, photos and other documents came to him through the deaths of his parents and brother, who had their own collections of memorabilia and books and photos from various maternal aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents.

These items from other relatives probed into a deeper past, going back as far as the 1850’s. David had no interest in much of the contents of those boxes, but had no idea what to do with them. I felt a slight twinge every time a former treasure that had been carefully saved and passed down over so many years went into the “toss” box.

I am related to David through our fathers, who were brothers. Many of the oldest artifacts had come to him through his mother’s family. Photos of people I didn’t know. Schoolbooks with children’s scribbles on pages published before the Civil War. Bibles with family trees hand-written inside. A locket with someone’s name etched on the face. A wooden hairpin, clearly old and clearly loved by someone. Strings of pearls. Lots and lots of costume jewelry that had been passed around the various women in David’s family, eventually winding up in a box tucked away in a corner. A beautiful, wooden, antique secretary with wonderful nooks and crannies and hidden compartments.

David’s mother Martha had a rich family history already firmly in place when she married my uncle Don.

David’s memory is fully intact and, with great enthusiasm as well as acuity and detail, he was able to answer my inquiries about the various former owners of these items. As with many European immigrant families of the 19th and early 20th centuries, David’s maternal relatives came from large, sprawling families that became larger and more sprawling as the generations unfolded. Many of them are now gone, and he has largely lost touch with those few he knew in his younger days who may still be alive. Would any of them be interested in these treasures, assuming he could even find them? Hard to say.

My poignant realization as I poked through David’s boxes looking at photos and turning pages, is that this is how some breadcrumb trails inevitably end. David is the last of a generational line with no one remaining to help him preserve the memories or pass them on. David is well aware of this and, not surprisingly, it saddens him although he is also circumspect about it. Some of the items had more significance to me in terms of wanting to preserve them than they did for him at this point in his life. He did not know the story behind many of the artifacts, even though he could talk at great length about the individual relatives and families they came from. Could they even be considered treasures anymore with no one left to remember?

We move through life towards the final conclusion. Sometimes reaching the end means leaving a family legacy behind that will become lost to history. The relatives who live near David now are cousins from my father’s side of the family. None of us know who the people are in David’s photos from his mother’s family that go back over 150 years.

Despite my insatiable desire to preserve all the family breadcrumbs within my reach, I have to come to terms with the fact that I can’t save the stories and histories of everyone’s family. They are all deserving and yet my focus thus far in my own breadcrumb journey has been on my mother’s side. Looking around my immediate orbit I see my father’s family on the horizon (which includes my cousin David), as well as my late husband Jay’s family, whose stories I would like to preserve for my son Conrad. In this moment of my life I don’t have the capacity or the skill to do a deep dive into David’s maternal branch, which saddens me because the few story crumbs David shared during the short time I spent with him were every bit as interesting as the ones I have been telling here in this blog.

Perhaps I will try to find a way somehow. After all, David is still with us and has many memories of spending time with both his maternal and paternal grandparents as well as many aunts, uncles and cousins. He knows and remembers much of their history, particularly in and around the town of Bolivar, Ohio, settled by Germans and where my father grew up. I’d like to capture some of those memories while they are still retrievable.

Reflecting On Our Own Legacies

As I looked through the grammar book from 1907, I wondered who the child was who wrote his name in a grade-school scribble on the inside cover. David is still able to connect those dots for me easily, but for how long? The sad reality is that many breadcrumb trails do come to an end, and this may be one that does. What happens to all the artifacts when David is gone? Who gets them? Do they get trashed? If not, how do they get preserved and who takes on that responsibility? David is approaching the twilight of his own life and so far has had no interest in spending the kind of time it would take to catalog and preserve various documents and photos, or finding them new homes. Who, then?

Perhaps we should all be asking ourselves these questions as we get older. Physical artifacts such as furniture, books, letters, scrapbooks, photos, and all the other material things that surround us serve as reminders of our own lives or those of our ancestors. They hold meaningful memories, and represent identities and emotions, until they don’t and become expendable. For many of us these treasures help define who we are and our place in the world right now, and also where we came from. For others, they are not treasures at all, and simply take up space and no longer serve any useful purpose. There is no right or wrong about this reality. It is experienced differently by everyone.

I have many artifacts and treasures lying around my house. So many, in fact, that I rotate smaller ones on and off my shelves, and in and out of my closets and cabinets. If I tried to put them all out at the same time my small house would look like a flea market stall. My house may seem quite cluttered to those who step inside. But these reminders of who I am bring me great joy and happiness, and when I look at them I smile and remember the people and times and events they represent. I mix the older treasures in with newer ones from more recent adventures. Could I live without the old school bell from the one-room schoolhouse where my grandmother taught? Or the bench that my mother made when she was in high school? Or the woven basket that my grandmother always used at her dinner table to serve bread. Or the ceramic cup that my father made as part of his therapy during his recovery from depression? Or the stories in his own handwriting that my late husband wrote when he was in college? Of course, but for now I don’t have to, and I’m not sure how I would feel about giving them up if I were suddenly forced to make that decision, like David was. Others in my family - siblings, nieces and nephews, my son Conrad, maybe other cousins - may be interested in preserving some of them. Or not, and at some point either I or someone else will make that decision.

Who would guess that my father made this sweet and beautiful little cup during a period of great personal struggle.

We can’t always stop families from fading away into the nether reaches of the historical universe. What is the corresponding time frame in our own families? When will we come to the end of our particular branch? Will the breadcrumb trail end at that point or will it find a way to continue? What will happen to the artifacts and memories? Does it matter? Do we care?

Food for thought.

What’s Next?

I will be continuing the Larson story beyond the 1938 trip, but have been distracted lately by other activities in my life. Spending time with friends and family. Continuing my quest to broaden my horizons and feed my brain through learning (or in my case, trying to learn) new skills. Picking up where I left off on prior pursuits left hanging when I went on my two-month trip. And generally chilling and relaxing and taking it easy during the cold, dark days of winter, with the occasional over-the-top physical endeavor that leaves my body asking “why?” in the most plaintive voice possible (see my story about the winter hike). My dog Sadie has similarly been chilling with me, although she craves more forays into the cold than I am willing to provide. Being the loyal companion that she is, she has made the adjustment to a more sedentary lifestyle and patiently waits for me to get off my duff and take her out for a romp. Now that it is the end of February and spring is right around the corner, both of us will be spending more time outdoors, welcoming warmer temperatures and sunny days (and mud, and rain, and flower buds, etc…).

Stay tuned as I begin preparations for hitting the road in March and diving back into the Larson family. New stories await!