Yesterday, my sister and I found our missing grandparents. Using DNA links and years of searching through Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, Find-A-Grave, ship manifests, and going down dozens of rabbit holes, we think we found them. Of course, they are already dead, as are most of their siblings and offspring, including my family genealogy and some who are quite fearful about this unexpected discovery. For my mother was adopted under strange conditions and never realized, until she was 45, that she was not who she thought she was. This news has stirred things up for a lot of people, perhaps worried we are coming for an inheritance? Of course, we are not. But DNA doesn’t lie.
They lived in rural Ontario, Canada. Descendents from Scottish and Irish immigrants. Lives full and rich and hard-working. Oh, my, how I wish I could have had them in my life! The story of my grandparents is complicated and fascinating and scandalous. It will not be a story that I share with the world, but it has affected me deeply. This is the causal web of our lives, the unseen and invisible driver that moves us, shapes us, presents us with unique events that we use to sharpen our virtue and our purposes. This is the Stoic acknowledgement of social connection and duty, which permeates all of our human nature. I am humbled and surprised by my own yearning to be a part of an unbroken lineage.
The Stoics were not indifferent, I believe, to the impact of ancestry. Even though not by blood connection, the Stoics honored their philosophical roots and leaders, going back to Chrysippus, Zeno, Socrates, even Hierocles. So I admit, this new ‘knowing’ feels like the discovery of gold, a context which gives a larger framework that holds me in its arms. At the same time, this information has little bearing on my now, with its daily prokopton work. Still, as the Oracle of Delphi reminds us, we need to ‘know thyself’ to make progress. My grandparent’s legacy is in me and for that, I am so grateful for the new explanations of who I am. The hand of Fate, or in this case genes, always nudging us forward in unpredictable but fundamentally connected ways! With gratitude and respect,
Kathryn, Todd, Derrick