When my grandfather passed away in January, I made a resolution that I would do what I could to ensure that he was not forgotten and that my descendants would know about him. So I started a little project that blossomed. The Brackbill Wiki is a set of pages I set up to collect family genealogy information, primarily original documents and pointers to photos. In the process of getting the site together, I also collected a bunch of information about various family members, friends, and institutions.

The core of the site is a set of documents from my grandfather and other family members that he gave to us or that he left behind. In particular, other family members and I are in the process of transcribing four years of his journal that span from the time he graduated from the state teachers’ college to the time my mom was born. The 1939 journal has been completely transcribed and the 1940 journal is in progress. We also used the site to provide a new home for my sister’s project, “Great Aunt Eva’s Blog,” which disappeared when her old blog host shut down. Esta is in the process of bringing it back on the new site right now.

There are a bunch of cool things that have come out of the process of transcribing these journals. I’ve gained a new appreciation for my grandparents’ lives (just how did they work six days a week and go out every night to choir practices and committee meetings? I only work five and I’m exhausted when I get home), for the people they spent time with (Twiddley!), and the infrastructure in which they grew up. I’ve also gotten to know my grandfather, and his sense of humor, a little better.

What occurred to me the other day was how this project is analogous, on a humbler scale, to big digital humanities projects like the Valley of the Shadow project, in which former UVA professor Ed Ayers and a team of students indexed and digitized reams of original materials from two Civil War era communities. In this case, our scope and our team is quite a bit smaller, but thanks to the wiki technology we used the material is coming together quite a bit faster.

My grandfather worked at an old fashioned water-powered mill, making flour and animal feed for the county, during the first years of his post-college life and of his marriage. The family has always known where the mill was—right around the corner from the Brackbill farm—but not what has become of it in its post-mill existence.

This weekend I learned that the mill now is the home of an antiquarian bookseller.

(Yes, I think God has a sense of humor. What better way to ensure I make a pilgrimage to uncover part of my Pop-pop’s history than to make sure it’s filled with books?)

The other ironic part: the mill is practically just around the corner from the family farm where I’ve attended reunions my whole life. Why ironic? Because I’ve been reading daily complaints in my grandfather’s diary about how he couldn’t get to work on time. It surely wasn’t because of traffic that he had problems getting there…

There are three texts that have been in my mind since my grandfather’s funeral service today. One, the morbidly funny Laurie Anderson line from “Gravity’s Angel”:

And at his funeral all his friends stood around looking said. But they were really thinking of all the ham and cheese sandwiches in the next room. And everybody used to hang around him. And I know why. They said: There but for the grace of the angels go I.

Because you know what: after a sleepless night, and the morning viewing, and the service, and walking out to the cemetery in the rain, and placing a flower on the casket, and walking back, I found myself frightfully hungry. So I got two ham salad sandwiches and listened to the guests reminisce about my Pop-Pop, and drank coffee. And I said: So. This is life reminding me that I’m still in it.

Quotation number 2: Also from Laurie Anderson, “World Without End”:

When my father died we put him in the ground
When my father died it was like a whole library
Had burned down. World without end remember me.

Because all day long I wanted to turn to him and ask a question about this relative, or that one, or about his life in Kinzers, or something about the house. And someone had taken all the books away.

The final quotation running through my head is a part of one of the verses that was read at the funeral. This version is from the NRSV (I Corinthians 15:35-57):

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen...

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

And really, if I didn’t learn anything at all from my grandfather, I learned to listen to the preacher, and the Bible, and chew over the theology, and argue about it, sometimes vehemently, and then to come back to it over and over again. But this much I know: we have planted my grandfather, but he continues to grow in us.

I got a call from my mother this morning informing me that my grandfather, Herman Brackbill, passed away earlier today at the age of 90. He would have been 91 next month.

As regular readers of my blog know, my grandfather’s health hasn’t been that great over the past few years, and it took a significant downturn a few months ago when he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. But when we saw him in December he was as alert, funny, and warm as ever. It hurts that he’s gone.

My fondest memories of my grandfather are from when I was a kid. We used to see him and my grandmother fairly often, and we had a little ritual going. In the days before my dad finished our basement, they would sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room, where the TV was, and we would come running down the hall early on Saturday morning and make Pop-pop watch cartoons with us. He would generally sit still with us for Looney Tunes, and he would invariably get caught up in the action with us and start laughing until he cried.

And I remember visiting him in Pennsylvania on Christmas Day and having his big voice boom out “Joy to the World” along with the radio—he inevitably sang the echoed “and heav’n and nature sing” like a true chorister. More recently, I had the privilege a few years back to sing next to him at a family gathering. His bass voice was less powerful but no less sure.

When my uncle Harold passed away recently, my grandfather missed him and the opportunity to spend time with him. They’re back together now, along with his other brothers and sisters that have gone before. It’ll be quite a family reunion tonight. I hope my great-grandfather has loosened up a little now and will allow some singing at the dinner table.

I uploaded a bunch of photos last night to Flickr, including some from our vacation in North Carolina: some purely family photos and one large set of a visit to the place I will always remember as Grandmother Jarrett’s house.

As you can see in the photos, it’s not really a house so much as a farm, with as many as seven or eight buildings on the property (counting various barns and one chicken shack). The property was built up over the years starting with my great-grandfather, Zeb Jarrett, who built the house. In one photo you can actually see the evolution of the house: the section with the porch on the right was the original house built by Zeb and Laura, while the middle section was added on a few years later and the part on the left was added by my grandfather. The house was well kept up over the years, and my aunt has put it in exceptionally good shape after my grandmother passed away a few years ago. But without my grandmother there, it feels like a stage set waiting for someone to walk on.

In fact, walking past the barns I felt the truth of Laurie Anderson’s lyric: When my father died we put him in the ground. When my father died, it was like an entire library burned down. In this case, everything still stands but the spirit of the place is gone.