A Telephone Call

This is really a followup to my previous post about Aaron. Last week, I was awakened by the phone. For some reason, I hadn’t slept much. Actually, I had gone to the computer for about two hours during the night. And then had gone back to bed. The call came from Aunt Mildred Pels. I was planning to call her later in the day because I had seen a post on Facebook by Justin Pels, her grandson, which said his mother had died. Since I was pretty sure that was Aunt Mildred and Uncle Jule’s daughter, I planned to call. I listened as she told me all about the events leading up to her daughter Susan’s death. We talked for quite awhile. I learned that her first husband’s family had a history of genetic problems. He, Jerry Hausman, had died at 41. After Mildred’s call, I called my cousin Susie Pels Greenberg, Uncle Jay’s daughter, to tell her the news. I woke her, too. Death is always difficult, but to see your child or grandchild die before you die, is so much harder than a parent, I think. Usually your parent is hopefully elderly, perhaps even has dementia as my mother did or leukemia as my dad had.

It reminded me of Aaron’s delivery in 1998. My daughter delivered a stillborn, Aaron, while her husband, Jeff, and I watched. We had waited all night for the delivery to happen. What a beautiful baby he was! We each held him for a long time before he was given to the nurse and we prepared to leave the hospital. Aaron would have been the same age as my grandson, Andy Jacobs, and Jasper Morris, Jeff’s nephew. As a matter of fact, Jasper was born about the same day and time approximately to my son-in-law’s sister, Melanie Gosden Morris in England.

So, what did I do after the two calls. Like many other genealogists, I worked on my genealogy putting all the Pels and Hausman relatives in the family tree that I had recently become friends with through Facebook. FB for me is a place where I keep in touch with friends from all different parts of my life. Family, school, work and genealogy. People I have met in person or not. For people my age, for whom travel is difficult, Facebook can keep us in touch. You see, Social Media keeps me in touch in many ways. I learn about upcoming events, deaths, births, new jobs, and so much more. The posts make me laugh, cry. and sometimes angry.

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