Look Up

Staying at Las Vegas's Bellagio for work, I was disappointed to be checked into a room without a view of the famous fountains. My vista is in the opposite direction, toward the mountains. But after taking it in, I think I like this view better. At least it's something "real," in contrast to most of the Vegas scene. It's easy to look at those mountains and, I don't know, just get lost a little.

A coworker whose room faces the same direction as mine said she was disappointed to only have a view of the freeway. "What about the mountains?," I asked. She didn't realize her view looked to the mountains, because the freeway was what initially caught her eye.

If the view gets you down, look up.

Have I told you this story?

Today I was talking with a coworker about genealogy and family histories, when I remembered a story that hardly ever crosses my mind, but astounds me fresh every time. 

When Dennis and I got engaged 20 years ago, a couple of my aunts who enjoy genealogy asked if they could trace some of Dennis's family history. (He obviously passed the pedigree test.) Dennis was born and raised in Iowa. His parents are both from Algona, Iowa, nearly 500 miles from the rural area east of St. Louis where I grew up. (Dennis and I met in college in Missouri.) He knew some basics about his family tree, and armed with that information, my savvy aunts were able to find out much more. What they uncovered, to the great surprise of everyone, was that his great-great grandparents had lived in the St. Louis area, and WERE BURIED IN A SMALL FAMILY CEMETERY LITERALLY JUST UP THE ROAD FROM WHERE I GREW UP. Like, a mile and a half up the road. 

The cemetery, no bigger than my living room, sits in the middle of a field. It's usually overgrown with brush and is separated from rows of beans or corn by a simple iron fence. My aunts got permission from the current landowner to clean up the small plot, and enlisted the help of a teen who needed a project for his Eagle Scout badge. They found a number of headstones, including those of Dennis's great-great grandparents, still legible after about a century's worth of weathering and neglect. 

Imagine. Dennis didn't know his ancestors had ever lived even remotely close to this area, and members of his direct bloodline are laid to rest just a short walk from where I grew up. 

I've never known quite how to process this, other than to simply let it affirm that some things are amazingly beyond explanation. 

Lower left blue marker: my parents' house

Top right blue marker: Schmitt family cemetery