Family Reunion

I go to Nauvoo to speak at a family reunion. Not my own. I'm impressed with what the family has pulled together about their Nauvoo ancestors. People who lived there however briefly and joined the Saints as they were driven out toward the west--eventually the Salt Lake Valley.


I'm impressed again with the value of story. Family members gave short sketches of lives they descend from. We stood at Carthage Jail and heard of Willard Richards, and a great great grandfather who was in the jail with Joseph two nights before the martyrdom.


We stood at the Trail of Hope on Parley Street and heard of others who left in that initial exodus from Nauvoo.


Over and over the descendants said they wished they had more information. But everything they knew, every shred, was interesting to them. One family member says she found a stubborn determination--sometimes to a fault--that she sees in herself and even in her children. That helps her, she says, to moderate her behavior.


Another family member that I have known for 40 years has quoted for years from her grandmother's journal. The grandmother's philosophies and ways of facing her own difficult life have continued to teach my friend all these years later.


Value lies in the writing.


I would prefer that my descendants know something about me that is important to me rather than more trivial information they keep just because that is all they have. Which means, I have to write it.


Technology makes it easy now, the writing. Letters, emails, talks, ideas, journals, actual autobiographies, all easier.

I determine to try again. In the meantime, Nauvoo is beautiful.