FATHERLOSS by NEIL CHETHIK : AN EXCELLENT BOOK ABOUT GRIEVING THE DEATH OF YOUR FATHER

I picked up this book, published years ago, at a book sale. It's an excellent book!  It starts with a 'gypsy' proverb : You have to dig deep to bury your father. While this book is written for sons, I think daughters can benefit too. It's a book of empathy and understanding.

  

This book was based on a national survey of over 300 men back in the day, along with in-depth interviews of many others. Some famous men are examples used to bring up the different ways that men grieve or process their relationship and feelings - or lack of - for their fathers. So I'll name drop:

John F. Kennedy Jr.

Michael Jordan

Dylan Thomas

John Quincy Adams

Mahatma Gandhi

Ernest Hemingway ....

Read about men's style of mourning and how one's relationship with dad is so impactful.

C 2026 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

CAROL BOWMAN ON REINCARNATION : U TURN IN THE WOMB : MISCARRIAGE and STILL BIRTHS

Perhaps this may give some comfort to those of you who've had a miscarriage...

Excerpts page 159 - 160 :

From our ordinary, earth-bound perspective these changes of plan are called by the medical terms miscarriage and stillbirth.  Most people, if they have never been through the experience, can't understand how deeply the parents feel a miscarriage or a stillbirth as a death, an inexplicable loss that leaves them bereft and grieving for a child they never knew.  Their beautiful hopes and dreams for loving companionship with the new baby evaporate.  Adding to the pain, no matter what medical explanation is they inevitable blame themselves at some point, wondering what they did wrong.

Yet looking at miscarriage and stillbirths from the perspective of the incoming soul turns our thinking inside out.  From the soul's perspective, a decision not to be born at that particular time and to a particular mother is simply a detour, a zigzag in the continuing journey through eons of lifetimes.  Souls decide to switch course for any number of reasons; to change sex or birth order, to wait for a more appropriate body for the soul's purposes, to wait until the parent's circumstances improve or to readjust the timing of a predestined rendezvous with another soul already on Earth or yet to incarnate.  Or it may be due to the biological fact that the fetus was defective.

Whatever the reason, it is clear that in some cases souls wait for another opportunity to return to the same family. How do we know? Because some children remember the whole process.  Then one day, in the middle of a causal conversation, they tell their parents about it. They innocently describe earlier attempts to be born to the mother or through another woman in the extended family. The parents are always shocked at first if the child's claim corresponds exactly to a pregnancy loss that had been kept hushed up, a personal secret too painful to talk about, and something beyond the comprehension of such a very young child. But after absorbing the truth of what their child is telling them, their shock turns to joy and relief when they realize the baby who died in the womb years ago was not lost to them forever. 

I've been reading the death records of a town in Europe that experienced waves of Plague - Cholera to be specific. So very many who had a few months or years to live... So rare to find someone who lived to be 70 or 80.

C 2025 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

BURIAL

 

MEMORY TABLE FOR DEPARTED LOVED ONES

From the Library of Congress, this Memory Table lithograph was designed 

by A. M. Bleichrode, circal 1974 in New York.

PRAGMATIC MARRIAGE and DEATH

Pragmatic marriage - matchmaking or introductions - and no contraception.  Children dead from diseases now conquered through vaccinations and antibiotics - Fragile beings.  Or because their mother was malnourished during her pregnancy.  Or had too many children close together to actually recover between births.  Or they wore born without a father to support the family. Or their mother had no milk.

Today we talk Grieving.  We say it takes time to heal.  We have psychotherapy.  Then?

They had religion -informed world views. Children born as replacements (but not reincarnated) for previously born children who died. It seems to me that our ancestors had a whole lot to grieve as intimate family members, wives and husbands, parents, siblings, as well as friends and people they surrounded themselves died.  Reminding them that they too would and that life had many risks.

They often remarried - pragmatically  and quickly- as they might have the first time around in youth - and there were blended families due to death rather than divorce (which we think is another form of death.)  A woman without a husband needed another one quickly.

Were they so different than us?  Did they always have to carry on and get to it?

Villagers in Europe were often quite genetically related.  

Children on farms worked young.

Girls were left uneducated more than boys.  Even well-to-do families thought education - reading and writing - though educating a girl was handicapping her, making her a less desirable and dependent wife.

This was socially acceptable.

I think of the brides of pre-contraception and modern medicine days as especially brave.  They all knew that pregnancy and childbirth could kill them. 

As I try to understand my ancestors, I'm glad for the choices that modern medicine has given us.

And that be it them or me, life is short.

C 2022 Ancestry Worship Genealogy

DEDUCTIVE REASONING in GENEALOGY - NARROWING DOWN THE AGE OF DEATH TO FIND THE RECORD

Now that I've had my big breakthrough in my Polish line research, I've easily gone back a few generations but records I focused upon and would like very much remain missing or undiscovered. They are yet to be indexed for sure.  I've not found that the death records have much to offer in identifying who the dead person was married to. The death records seem to be the least indexed as well.

TO FOCUS and potentially reduce the time spent on looking for records page by page here is what I do.

I look at the marriages of the children.  If there have been two - three - four - marriages, I look at the marriages of the children from those marriages too because in these records there is a notation about each partner's heritage.  If possible start with the first married child and work forward in time.  If it says the parent is p.d. (parent deceased) you'll know that at the date of that wedding, that parent is dead.  Or both are.

ie. Jan's marriage  1835 parents both alive

     Marianna's marriage 1838 note that her father is diseased

      Sophia's marriage 1843 note that both parents are deceased.  

Therefore I know that I need to look from 1838 to 1835 for the death of these children's father.  And from 1843 to 1838 for the death of these children's mother.

CORONA VIRUS PANDEMICS - DEATH RECORDS - GENEALOGY

Do you think you could stay at home for two weeks - possibly be alone the entire time - and keep busy?

I think I could.

I need time to organize my household, go through my closets, ready things for donation.

I can imagine catching up on my reading, watching movies I haven't yet, trying recipes I've been meaning to make. Writing letters or calling old friends I haven't had contact with in a while.  And of course there's always genealogy research and family history writing to continue.

Maybe you're sequestering yourself at the moment, or just staying home and out of crowds more than usual, and maybe you're reading this blog - ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY Blogspot to occupy your time.

I've been thinking about the term PANDEMIC and how diseases effected whole populations.  Like maybe all of you, my ancestors/ family have died of:

Tuberculosis

Cholera

Typhus 

The flu - as recently as 1955 and 1963 (Seeing the death records reminds me that taking the flu shot is a good idea.)

And perhaps most frightening - Small Pox.  As I understand it, you could catch it and go through horrible symptoms such as so much vomiting that you became completely dehydrated, resulting in organ failure.  There were also hideous weeping sores that left survivors with scars. A husband could give it to his wife who was nursing a newborn and all three would be dead in days.  A  feminine survivor in, say, colonial Philadelphia, might use pink colored wax - that contained led - to fill in the scars and give herself a smooth complexion.

I've seen the epidemics or pandemics in church records especially, when whole rows of people, young and old,  related or not, have the same reason for death listed. One after another.

An epidemic becomes a PANDEMIC when it effects a whole country or the world.

Pandemics have weened some DNA from populations.  There's some evidence that those who were more resistant may have even had changes in their DNA that they could pass on.  For instance the Black Death required thousands of burials and in those days before modern sanitation every opportunity to catch it and yet some survived.

The Black Death did something else to Europe.  People discarded class considerations in order to re-partner as a matter of survival.

And as there was more superstition than science at that point, people did not understand the role of filth.

I'm sure you are all listening to the news, watching YouTube videos, reading newspapers and on-line articles with the latest on this Wuhan Coronavirus.  Mixed in there is some speculation, some fake news (in both suggesting there is no problem and suggesting it's totally out of control.)

C 2020 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

PROCESSING GRIEF?

PRACTICE LOVE!

You loved someone - maybe for years -
You know how to love -
Use that love now to love a pet - foster or adopt -
Love the planet - ecology -
Contact people in your extended family who you didn't have enough time for earlier in your life -

HONOR YOUR LOVED ONES
Write down a favorite family stories
or Create a Scrapbook -
Continuing their special project or work (their garden, their charity.)

IT'S OK to FORGET YOURSELF and your GRIEF and
have a good day, laugh, notice how beautiful it is outside.

WOMEN WORLD WAR II PILOTS

DAILY MAIL - WOMEN PILOTS of WORLD WAR II FINALLY ALLOWED TO BE BURIED AT ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETARY


FROM THE ARTICLE LINKED :
More than 1,000 women joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots Program
And 38 of them lost their lives flying non-combat missions during the war 
But their contribution to the war effort remained unacknowledged for years 
It wasn't until 1977 that WASP members even received veteran status
Arlington officials said this year they don't qualify due to space limitations
But President Obama signed a bill into law giving them that right.

MORE DEATHS AROUND ME - COUNTY DEATH RECORDS - SOCIAL SECURITY DEATH RECORDS

Since my recent post about my senior citizen friend who had a well lived 90 plus years on this earth, word has reached me that a friend from the 1990's died a few months ago, though very little is being said as for the details, she left a son and husband.  A neighbor I posted about last year in my story about senior citizens, girlfriends, and good neighbors, has also died.


Walking the dog the other day, my senior citizen neighbor who had been in a nursing home recuperating when her roommate had a bad motorcycle accident and went into a coma last year, came over to me to tell me he had died.  She was rattled and I was shocked.  This man had really pushed himself to get well enough to go back to work and keep his job after being a coma for a month, and so swollen with edema that the physical therapy had to wait.  The macho type who liked to ride that motorcycle on the freeway between the cars, it had been difficult for him to accept taking a Paratransit van back and forth for a few months.
His motorcycle remained in front of the drive and a biker friend of his would come over on the weekends to help him get back on it.  His coworkers had donated their vacation time to him so that he could remain out of the office for a longer time than usually allowed, and over time, slowly, he had overcome much.  He had been through a lot of medical procedures and tests and was well enough to relax by going camping.  Now he had been found dead while out camping.  Likely his heart gave out, but since he was not at home or in the hospital, there will be the usual scientific probing called an autopsy.


DEATH RECORDS are public records.  Public does not mean that the details of a persons death are as easy to access as what used to be called a "police blotter," and is the report of crime and arrests in an area.  However, anyone can send away for a death record, usually to the county in which the person died and for a small fee.  Some states have you state or prove you are a close relation such as a child, sibling, parent, or spouse.  Some don't.  In some cases the death record a person can get only states that in fact the person has died, and that person would be named and a birth date and death date, no details.  In others you get a copy of the paperwork filed, usually with a doctor's signature, stating the cause of death.


For those of you who want to collect the DEATH RECORDS of your relatives not only because of genealogy interest, but for medical history, perhaps inclinations towards genetic issues in the family that DNA testing may or may not prove, here are some considerations.


1) Doctors are not and never were all equal, and the further you go back, the more likely it is that the doctor did not know what is known today by medical science.  Prior to X-rays and the sophisticated tests possible today, doctors did their best, but the full sum of their knowledge and education may have been lacking.  In other words, the diagnosis might be speculative.  (Remember that barbers - hair cutters - used to be surgeons - and that included pulling teeth!)


2) Poor people often did not call doctors, or called them only in emergencies.  This lead to more speculative diagnosis as well.  So consider the diagnosis.  For instance, if the record mentions broken bones or a pregnancy related death, it's probably correct.  However, cancer was not well understood, and might be called "tumor" or "long illness."  "Long illness could also be TB, or many other diseases.)


3) Currently, if you are a close family member and your loved one is being autopsied, before you give permission, be sure to state that you want a copy of the report.


4) FUNERAL HOME records and CEMETERY RECORDS tend to repeat the information on the DEATH RECORD.  You never know, however, when more details might be given.


5) Consider doing  some research about the state of the art in medicine, treatment of the disease at the time, and so on, in order to put the report into a historical perspective.


For instance, death by TB was considered so frightening that some health departments in the United States issued booklets to the citizens, advising them not only to cover their nose and mouth and wash their hands, but stated that the children on a mother with TB could not be raised by her.  (Many children were born with TB because their mothers were infected.)


DEATH and DEATH RECORDS always remind me of an old Italian proverb that goes like this, "After death, the King and the Pawn go back into the same box."

WHAT DOES "LONG ILLNESS" MEAN on OLD FRENCH DEATH RECORD : SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS : QUESTIONS FROM READERS of ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY

Question for Ancestry Worship Genealogy

I've been reading old records from a parish in or near Paris from the 1800's and the priest keeps writing in "Long Illness" in the death records.  What does this mean?

Alice

Answer from Ancestry Worship Genealogy

"Long Illness" can mean anything from cancer to TB to any other illness that takes a long time to kill a person.  It can also simply mean Old Age, and all the debilitations through the years; that a person just wasn't themselves or feeling good for a long time.  A Long Time itself is subjective.  To me a Long Illness is years on end, but to some people six months is a long time to suffer.

It's therefore a mystery illness, particularly one that was not well understood at that time and place.  You may have to be satisfied with that.  However, here are things you could check into before you write it up.

1) At that time and place were death records only kept in the village or town or only at the church?  Were the records duplicated or also kept in the Dioceses archives or perhaps sent to a larger administrative center, and kept as a civil record?  See if both records agree or one has more to say about the death.

2) Where is the person buried?  Does the cemetery have any records that might not only give you a grave location but also testify to the reason for death?  (In the USA the death certificate and burial/cemetery record usually back each other up.)

3) Was the death covered in a newspaper article or other published account, for instance if the person was a member of a club, university, team, or union, or employed with a large company, or notable as a dignitary or politician, lawyer or doctor ? Possibly their obituary will give more information.

4) At the time and place of their death were there any prevailing illnesses or plagues?  For instance, you say that the priest keeps writing "Long Illness" and that makes me think that maybe there was TB in that town.  Knowing this would not prove that your ancestry died the same way,  but it would be OK to add a paragraph about diseases of that time and place for the purposes of historical interest!

C 2016  Ancestry Worship Genealogy - BlogSpot

THE LIMITATIONS OF TOMBSTONE PROJECTS - THERE ARE BURIALS THAT HAVE NO TOMBSTONES

I have very mixed feelings about tombstone projects. 

Volunteers go through cemeteries, take the information down off the tombstone - sometimes photographing - and put it on the information up on the world wide web - the Internet for anyone who uses the net to access. 

To me this can be culturally insensitive and as I see it, no graveyard that allows it is sacred.  Some cultures do not allow picture taking of the living, believing that this takes some of a person's essence or soul and some see tombstones as ancestral and even where the soul rests.  THE TOMBSTONE CENSUS TAKERS SEEM TO EASILY GAIN PERMISSION or DO NOT CARE about these things.  It makes me question what paying for a sacred space or privacy in death is all about.

The tombstone project volunteers put information up that is less than 70 years old and the US government thinks of 70 years as the privacy zone - thus the 1940 census was just revealed and records in many states are sealed for the same reason - privacy.

Some people have tombstones that have been carved with the name of the spouse who isn't dead yet. This communicates information such as the name of the living person and that they have been widowed.  Not private.  In some places, not safe at all.

I can't even get into all the ways the information can be used by identity thieves.

MAYBE THE WORST THING ABOUT TOMBSTONE PROJECTS is that they give the FALSE IMPRESSION that the burials with tombstones are all the burials in that cemetery.  YOU SHOULD STILL CONTACT CEMETERIES IF YOU ARE TRYING TO FIND RELATIVES, and the Death Record of that person should record if they were buried and where, or if they were cremated.  So don't use tombstone information without the death record for your genealogy.

As funerals and cemeteries and tombstones are more expensive, I suspect more people will be going with cremation in the future, unless their religion forbids it.

Please be aware that some cemeteries have no tombstones, or at least many that have been eroded or stolen.  There is no national law that says you have to buy one. Many cemeteries have about 2/3rds of their burials unmarked.  This can be because no one ever bought a tombstone or because more than one person is in the tomb.  Check the rules and regulations for the city, county, or state about this, but in some places a purchased tomb site allows two burials, one atop the other.  (In goes the destitute child or the ex wife!)

Also check into the religious beliefs about burials which may differ because a person is Muslim or Jewish, as examples.

I HAVE FOUND A NUMBER OF TOMBSTONES THAT WERE CARVED WITH INCORRECT INFORMATION, including misspellings of names, variations of the name the person was born with being very common.  This can give you the impression you have not found the person you're looking for. 

Finally, the birth date may not be accurate.  In some times and places the date on the tombstone is the date the person was BAPTISED, and the death date, the date they received LAST RITES.  Really!

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR - YOU MIGHT JUST GET IT : BOOK EXCERPT

LARRY DOSSEY : BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR - YOU MIGHT JUST GET IT : BOOK EXCERPT 

If you've seen the death records of your ancestors a generation or more back, you know that many diseases than have since been "conquered" took our people out of this life. One of the most common diseases that killed people was TUBERCULOSIS and it's to blame for more than one of my ancestor's death.

Here is what author of BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR, Larry Dossey, has to say:

"Consider the history of tuberculosis, one of the great scourges of humanity. As biologist Lyall Watson notes, skeletal evidence for tuberculosis has been found in graves in Germany dating back two thousand years and in Egypt's Old Kingdom. Engravings from 2500 B.C.E. show spinal deformities that, along with hieroglyphics descriptions provide clear descriptions of death from tuberculosis. The disease was common in ancient China, India, and Greece, where it was described by Hippocrates five centuries before Christ...

As cities grew larger and people moved about more freely, tuberculosis became pandemic. Waves of the "White plague" spread across the world, devastating cities in its wake, competing with the "black death" in ferocity. The last and greatest European epidemic began in England during the sixteenth century and peaked in London around 1750. The capital cities of western Europe were affected in turn though 1870. Then, Watson states, "There was a sudden, marked, and inexplicable decline in TB everywhere that records have been kept - beginning, it seems, in Germany in 1882... WHY?... Surgical interventions in tuberculosis did not begin until 1912, and antibiotic therapy in this illness was unknown until 1944. "But something did happen in Germany in 1882 that could be very significant," Watson observes - the discover by Dr. Robert Koch of the cause of tuberculosis, MYCOBACTERIUM TUBERCUILOSIS. Almost overnight physicians and researchers could actually see the organism for themselves, and common citizens could visualise it from illustrations."

"Almost immediately," Watson states, "There was a marked decrease, not only in the incidence of the disease, but also in its mortality. Deaths fell from 600 per 100,000 to around 200 in less than a decade... The recent improvements can all be attributed to better medical care, but nothing comparable happened to account for the sudden and rapid decline which is evident in Hamburg and Berlin during the 1880's. Nothing, that is, except Koch's discover and spreading awareness of what lay behind the disease that had come to be called "Captain of all the Men of Death."

pages 120-121 from BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR - YOU MIGHT JUST GET IT

C 2013-2025 Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot

TYPHOID MARY : THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN AMERICA

Have you ever found an ancestor's death on a church record and seen the notation that they died of Typhoid?

NOVA WGBH Boston Video's video takes the case of Mary Mallon who was, in 1906, an Irish immigrant who rose to the top of the servants profession by becoming a cook for private families. She was, unknown to herself, a carrier of the Typhoid disease. George Soper was a doctor who was performing bacterial detective work, and his research lead him to Mary, who, perhaps due to her level of ignorance, would not believe and could not accept that her presence had lead to the sickness and in some cases death of people she worked for.

Because typhoid had to be transmitted through food and improper (to be delicate about it) bathroom habits, Mary was first sequestered on an island near Manhattan and then allowed to work at something else - ironing. After a few years of barely making it ironing, Mary disappeared and found herself employment as a cook once again. She was, perhaps, in denial about how deadly she was to come in contact with, or simply, trying to survive.

The DVD includes actor depictions of Mary and the doctor, and is based on a book by Judith Walzer Leavitt called "Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Heath."

WEST VIRGINIA OFFERS SOME SEARCHABLE BIRTH, MARRIAGE, and DEATH INDEXES

"The West Virginia Vital Research Records Project
is a collaborative venture between the West
Virginia State Archives and the Genealogical
Society of Utah (GSU) to place online via the
West Virginia Archives and History Web site
selected West Virginia county birth, death
and marriage records, and selected statewide
death records in a viewable, downloadable and
searchable format accessible"