This afternoon I was sorting through a plastic box filled with
documents that are almost 100 years old. Many of the documents are letters
written to each other, by my great aunt and uncle between 1917 and the closing
days of World War I in 1919. The earliest of the letters were written before
they married; the last ones after he had been drafted into the army and was
training at Fort Travis in San Antonio. In the box there are also a few old
photographs, draft documents, military manuals, picture postcards and other
assorted pieces of literature that were important to them in their day. I
have undertaken the task of organizing, indexing and digitizing these
documents. I am convinced they must be preserved for history, and hopefully will
find their way into a museum someday.
My aunt and uncle had no children, but were
very fond of nieces and nephews; my father – one of those nephews-- lost his dad
to a drunk driver in 1941, and was especially close to them. They helped care
for him when he was in his early teens; he and my mother took care of them through
their final years.
These letters are their love letters. They
are also filled with historical references including frequent mention of the influenza.
History records the seriousness of the influenza outbreak during that time
period.
“The
pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. Between
50 and 130 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in
human history. Even using the lower estimate of 50 million people, 3% of the
world's population (which was 1.86 billion at the time) died of the disease.
Some 500 million, or 27% were infected.”[i]
It is interesting to see how
obviously concerned this young rural couple was about what was going on in
their world. There is almost a sense of panic as each letter mentions this
person or that one who has come down with influenza. These letters give a
unique, personal perspective on this terrible outbreak and at the same time,
provide some insight into farm life in the Fort Spunky area of Somervell and
Hood Counties in that period. At the same time one can learn about life in a
wartime Army training camp and what it was like to be a young farming couple
trying to start life together in those days.
Since they are both gone now, I have
debated long and hard with myself about what to do with these letters. Each
letter represents a vital and interesting part of a very personal and intimate
story that began about 100 years ago and lasted until the 1980s. Should I keep
them in the box and let them waste away? Should I destroy them –
keeping their secrets silent forever?
Looking at the
pile of letters and documents in the box I visualized what they would be in
just a few more short years. I sense that if I just give the box a good
shaking, it will turn all those letters into tiny fragments of confetti
that would be forever unidentifiable as letters. They are just that fragile and
are not far from that now. What stories would be lost if that were to happen!
What a shame it would be for me to not share these little vignettes into
history and help my generation and the next to perhaps understand a little
better our rural Texas roots.
I also thought
of all the other untold stories, about lives lived and lost; simple little love
stories that meant little to the history of the world but meant the world to
those lost to history. Tombstones in every cemetery mark the graves of people
who lived their very own individual story. Most of those stories are told for a
generation, perhaps passed to a second, and then for the most part, lost for
all of time or reduced to nothing more than dates on a tombstone.
In the case of
my great aunt and uncle, I have the opportunity to preserve some of those
stories. I do not know whether I should view this as an obligation, a privilege
or just an opportunity? It feels a bit intrusive, nosy and meddlesome, and I
suppose it would be if they were still alive or had children or grandchildren
surviving them.
If then the
psalmist was right--that we spend our
years as a tale that is told
--are we the better or the worse for the telling? Therein lies the dilemma. If my
great aunt and uncle were alive today I know they would want the story to remain
private between them. Yet, if they could speak now, from where they are, I
wonder if they wouldn't say to me "tell our story! Tell how we lived, how
we loved, what was important to us and what was going on in our time." I
wonder.
All these
questions also make me reflect on what it would be like to ask Biblical
characters about their legacies—about their stories? What if we asked Rahab
about hers? Would she be shy about sharing it? I believe she would likely tell
us that she was an ordinary woman introduced into an extraordinary set of circumstances
by the mighty providence of God; that it was by HIS hand she was able to save
her family. When confronted by her place in Biblical history, she would likely
be amazed at how large a place her small story occupied in the telling of it
all.
What of Joseph?
He knew how important he was to his family in his age, but did he really
understand his important place in history? Did he understand his importance in
the preservation of the Messianic line?
Did Andrew
really appreciate the eternal effect his bringing his brother Peter to Jesus
would have on all of history?
And like the
question posed by Mark Lowry's beautiful song, "Mary, did you
know...?"
Then I MUST
ask, "What of MY story?" Will it be told? Will it be WORTH telling?
Or will it fall into obscurity, lost to all but the heavenly host throughout
all eternity? Will it disappear into an ancient pile of 100-year-old confetti
with just a rattle or two of a plastic box? Will it be nothing more than two
dates on a brass plaque in a Columbarium somewhere?
The true story
– the true legacy is found in the spiritual DNA we are able to pass on to those
who come after us; to those whose life is changed somehow for the good by the
life we ourselves live. Our story will be told by the generations that know
Jesus because of what we have done, or by the generations who will never know
Jesus because of what we failed to do—and we may never be mentioned by name!
I think perhaps
Judgment Day can be summed up in just one question: “What is your story?”
I love you!
Roger
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