stories - Dad of Divas

Though of course I had heard the phrase that it takes a village to raise a child before, I never really knew what it meant until my daughter Lily was born on August 4, 2005. When she was born, our family and friends surrounded us, and I could see the village that surrounded us. I was so happy then, and I had no idea what was to come.

Shortly after I returned to work, I could tell that there was something wrong. I was frequently breathless and I had no energy for anything. While plenty of people suggested that I was just tired from having a baby, I knew that there was something else going on. On November 21, 2005, I got the bad news.

I was diagnosed malignant pleural mesothelioma, a cancer caused by my accidental childhood exposure to asbestos. This news was devastating, but in my panic, I focused on my beloved family, which suddenly felt so new and fragile.

My thoughts were whirling around me, but when I looked at my daughter and my husband, my resolve firmed. I knew that I had to fight this for them, and I knew I had to fight it as hard as I could. Because this cancer is so aggressive, we decided on one of the most drastic mesothelioma treatment options. My husband and I flew to Boston, where, on February 2, I had my lung removed in a procedure known as extrapleural pneumenectomy. I had 18 days in the hospital to recover from this procedure and then, 2 months later, I started up on the round of chemotherapy and radiation.

During this time, Lily was being lovingly cared for by her grandparents, my parents. They both had fulltime jobs, but their church group came to the rescue. When they couldn’t be with her, Lily was cared for by a wide range of loving people. Some of them were girls that I had once babysat in my hometown! Even if I missed her every day, I was confident that Lily was receiving the best care that she could possibly have, given the circumstances.

The people who came through for us during this dark time truly surprised and humbled me. The people who I would have expected to be around were no where to be found, and other people, who I never would have expected to help in a million years, were right by our sides. Whether we were in Boston or our own home town, we had friends who asked after us, who helped where they could and who kept our spirits strong. It was truly humbling the reaction that we got from our local community.

Cancer taught me many things, and I realized that even on my darkest day, there was always someone there to pull me out. Life has since gotten easier, but I still occasionally look back on that time with wonder and awe. I will never forget the love and support that was so generously given to me at that time.

As I have gotten older I have found myself drawn to wonder more and more about the roots of my family. Probably in high school I started to ask questions and then in college I started to record the perspectives from grandparents as well as from sites on the Internet.

I find it interesting to think about helping my children understand what it means to be from our family and what made our family what it is today.

For me, I have enjoyed getting to hear the stories behind the stories by sitting and listening to my grandfather talking about working the county fair circuit with his father as he showed his prize Black Poland China Hogs (Blue Ribbon Winning). I loved hearing about my great grandfather on my mother’s side (whom I never knew) who made his own wine, but only drank it himself. All of these stories have been etched in my memories, and I hope to someday share them with my kids.

Many in my family have started turning to me for information about my family as I have tracked my family’s history (rather unscientifically) back to the early 1600’s. Most of this has been due to the help of the Internet and the help of others who are doing great research on their own families.

If you decide to try and research some of your family history, you need to go into this with an idea of how in depth you wish to go. Do you want to focus on one side of the family? How far off your main lineage do you want to extend yourself? Be careful in simply adding information from others as this may take your family tree to areas you never wished you had gone. Many people are very fanatical about how they do their genealogy. There are many purists our there that have to have documented proof for facts before they will add it to their family tree. For these people I say thank you, as I do not always have the time to do the document searching and fact finding myself.

Researching your family and connecting with others can open up your family to relatives you never knew existed. I have met many distant cousins through the medium of genealogy and have had some interesting conversations with them over the years and I am sure that you will as well.

Someday with all of the information that I have collected about our family I would love to be able to go and visit some of the areas where my family emigrated and immigrated from, but we will see what life allows!

For those of you that do wish to start researching or allowing your kids to start researching there are many great sites that will give you a boost. There are also a number of great software packages that will allow you to organize your information, pictures and the like in one place.

Software
Family Tree Maker – http://www.familytreemaker.com/

Sites
http://www.ancestry.com/
http://www.familysearch.org/
http://www.geni.com/
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

There are many other great sites out there, many of which may be directly related to your family history. I encourage you all to talk to your kids about their families and work together to learn more about the past!

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Raising Lily – Guest Post by Heather Von St. James

Manly Monday #14 – There is More to Your Roots Than Your Crazy Aunt Betty!