Goodbye, Columbus

In the post-funeral quiet, after all the rest of the family has rushed back to their daily grind, I've had the luxury of mulling over life in Columbus, Ohio, in the intermittent opportunities I've had to absorb its ambience.

Grabbing the ever-present cup of coffee to fend off the kind of chill now unfamiliar to this California transplant, I've taken the last two days to sit down, relax and go through old scrapbooks, stare at photographs capturing long-gone memories and become absolutely amazed at one discovery: I have an aunt who felt it her mission to pass along the snippets of old family ephemera, much the same as my husband's grandmother had served that capacity for her Tully family.

If you remember, it was Agnes Tully Stevens who had taken it upon herself to collect, preserve and pass along all the material sequestered by her mother, Catherine Malloy Tully—those wonderful, tangible tokens of the Tully-Stevens heritage that ultimately found their home with my own family and, by extension, I've been able to share through posts right here at A Family Tapestry.

While I knew about the rich fabric of my husband's Irish line, all these years, I had presumed I was the holder of an impoverished family line devoid of any such tokens of family history. Yesterday, looking through boxes of memorabilia tucked away over the decades by my aunt, I discovered I was wrong. While I can't say I've been recipient of any of those wonderful antiques some people boast of as part of their heritage, I now see I have been blessed with a stash of photographs, newspaper clippings and even ephemera giving me a sense of person for the past two generations in my own Davis line. These are the kinds of tokens that bring a person to life in the eyes of those who barely knew them.

They are also the type of material that reminds me to pick up the DAR application process where I had left off last year, and add some of the documentation I've stumbled upon in this past week. We are, after all, talking about the passing of a descendant of a Patriot here.

Of course, I am quite delighted. I have a lot to get busy scanning, and I can't wait to share these small gifts with family. This is the kind of present that helps fill the void after such a loss. With so much more just found that I need to attend to on my aunt's behalf, I'm beginning to realize how unlikely it will be that all this business will be completed by the time of our flight out of here this afternoon. But at this point, how can I just walk away from all this?

Maybe, just maybe, I'll be back