Search turned into treasure hunt

It is amazing what one can find on the Internet. Our brother-in-law’s mother died and I was searching for the time and place of her funeral. I found her voting record and it showed she had been voting since 1948. I read parts of an 18-page oral history interview someone had done with her husband. I discovered that her father had held many patents and how he earned his fortune. There were a couple of entries that mentioned her involvement in a movie her granddaughter recently made, even though her part ended up on the cutting room floor. In short, I found all kinds of interesting things, but not what I was looking for.
I was searching for this information a day or two after her death and am guessing that the details had not been sorted out nor conveyed to the news media at that time. She had a large family and everyone was understandably upset. We didn’t want to bother them unnecessarily.
On the afternoon of the second day I finally happened upon an entry that detailed when the viewing was and where. A call to a relative confirmed this information and told us what we needed to know. Previous calls had indicated that details had yet to be finalized.
We will begin the long trek across Ohio tomorrow and by the time you read this, we will be safely back home. It seems that the only times our extended families get together is when somebody dies. This is sad but that is the way it is. We think the things we do to occupy our time have priority over family. Our jobs, our projects, our wants, needs and desires all are seen as being more important than taking time to visit distant relatives. It is only when someone dies that we realize how short our time is on this earth and how important it is to spend time with loved ones.
In my search for details of the arrangements, I was reminded that someone once described the Internet as the largest library in the world, except all the books were in a jumble on the floor. This disorganization can lead to some interesting finds. It can also lead to frustration when sifting through mounds of irrelevant nonsense.
It would help if people’s names were unique. But no matter what your name is, it seems there is always more than one person with that name. Add in variations of the name and the possibilities are endless. One has to know an approximate location in order to be assured that the person is indeed the one sought and that isn’t always enough to narrow the choices.
The search for information is like a treasure hunt, with hidden gems just waiting to be unearthed. It never occurred to me that one’s voting record was public knowledge. I always thought ballots were secret. Yet, there it was, showing not only that a woman I admired had voted in every election since 1948, but which party she voted for and sometimes for which individual candidates.
If I had found the funeral arrangements in the first few seconds of my search, I would have missed out on assorted tidbits and irrelevant trivia that helped round out what I already knew about the classy and feisty matriarch of my brother-in-law’s family.
Last year also began with a funeral. My last uncle had died and the eulogy was about a man far different from the one I had known. I hope this isn’t a trend and that this is the last time we will begin the year with the death of a loved one.[[In-content Ad]]