Who will remember?

Some of the monumental questions we ask ourselves is: Who will remember me after I'm gone?  Will it matter that I was here? Will anyone care?  These questions can haunt us and cause us to worry and wonder and, sometimes, do crazy things in an effort to be remembered.

My Dad's grandfather on his Dad's side, my great-grandfather was named Erik Olson.  He was born in Sweden in 1851.  He grew up in Stroms Parish, Stromsund, Jamtland, Sweden.  It is fairly certain he was an only child.  I don't know how much school he completed.  He married in 1875 a neighbor girl named Maret Martensdotter.  They had 9 children together.  Sometime in 1892 (or perhaps earlier than that), when they were pregnant with the 9th child, they made the decision to migrate to America. It appears the decision was motivated by the Swedish government's policy of requiring military service of every male Swede.  Maret did not want her sons to face this requirement. So in April 1893 they started the long process of packing and moving.  I can only imagine what that involved.

A family sponsored them in northern Minnesota.  Toward the end of the summer they moved into a one or two room 'shanty'.  On Halloween that same year Maret died.  Once again I can only imagine the feelings that must have swept the man as he contemplated this new life in America with 9 children, the youngest only 6 months or so.

Faced with this difficulty he did what countless of folks have done, he gritted his teeth and did what had to be done.  The younger children were cared for by the older.  The baby was 'farmed out' to another family.  (He was actually adopted by that other family and so had a different last name than his brothers and sisters!)
They got on with the business of living.  Reading 'between the lines' as they say you have got to admire a man who could take what had been handed to him and make a life for his family in this new, and sometimes strange, new world.

My father remembers this grandfather.  He categorized his grandfathers as 'the singing Grandpa and the grouchy Grandpa'.  This one was the grouchy one...  I must remember that my father was just 6 years old when this man passed away.  It seems harsh to judge a man through the eyes of a 6 year old!  He died in 1937.  There are pictures of him throughout his life that I have in a 'book' compiled by one of my aunts.  She had contracted ALS, Lou Gerhig's disease, and this was a labor of love that helped her get through things.  What a gift she gave to all of us!  A chance to know something about your forebears.

I will write more about this later.  Right now I am in awe of a man who moved his family to America when he was he was in his early 40's and took what came and handled it. 

I named one of my sons after him.