Today Is Monday, December 8, 2025: This Is What Happened.

 I would like this writing into a blog post. But I would also like to place some symbolic in the writing. Nice and tidy please. Here is my first time, I pulled one my custom made writing and or journal prompts...Write about remembering an ancestor or being remembered yourself.

Here is my first time pulling one of my custom-made writing and journal prompts:
“Write about remembering an ancestor, or being remembered yourself.”

It’s strange how we recall those who made a dent in history—whether for good or bad. Yes, we all hear about those who made a lot of money, but we don’t hear about those who simply got up and went to work. The so-called blue-collar workers.

I grew up in a blue-collar family. My dad worked on the railroad and was a member of the Teamsters Union. No one reads about Harold Witherell in books. I believe he is mentioned in passing, in one book: Spokane International Railroad. Nor will anyone read how his father, Clarence—my grandfather—abandoned his family. It’s also not mentioned that my other grandfather, Edgar, was a bootlegger back in Minatare, Nebraska.

Sure, I have some known surnames in my past: Munch, Stevens/Stephens, and Shirley.

For the Munch name, a great-grandmother’s maiden name was Munch, and then of course there is the artist EDVARD MUNCH, and even CARDINAL MUNCH
For the Stevens/Stephens line, I have a 3rd-great-grandmother whose maiden name was Stevens/Stephens, just like the writer VIRGINA WOOLF family line.
And last would be the Shirley line. I’m sure some of you have heard of BELLE STARR. My mother’s given name was Myra. She was named after her father’s mother’s middle name: Cynthia Myra. Yes, my grandmother on my mom’s side had the maiden name Shirley.

Part of my reading habit includes journals and diaries. Queen Victoria wrote in her journals from the age of 13 until shortly before she died. One of her daughters later edited them. Her grandfather, King George III, also kept a journal but ordered it destroyed upon his death. The poet Sylvia Plath kept a journal as well. For some reason, her ex-husband Ted Hughes burned her last journal.

I have a fear of my journals being edited or destroyed—pages ripped out because someone might find them controversial. Like my Uncle Ned, who wore colorful clothing.

When walking through a cemetery and coming upon the graves and their markers, I do wonder many things, such as:

1. What color was their bedroom?

2. What was their favorite food?

3. What books did they read?

4. How much did it cost to go to a movie when they were alive?

5. Were they born in the same town where they are now buried?

Sure, I only listed five, but I could come up with a ton more.

I had Chat Gpt looking into some of the symbol and the mean behind them.

Symbolic Footnotes

1. The Train Wheel — represents the laboring ancestor; movement without applause, progress without spotlight.

2. The Torn Page — symbolizes deleted histories, burned diaries, and all voices removed because they were inconvenient.

3. The Empty Chair at Supper — for the ancestor who walked away, or the one taken too soon; absence shapes memory as much as presence.

4. The Candle Passed Hand to Hand — lineage not of blood alone, but of names, stories, quirks, and stubborn truths.

5. The Weathered Headstone — marks a body, not a life; the soul lives instead in recipes scribbled, laughter remembered, and handwriting saved in a drawer.

6. The Colored Coat — for Uncle Ned and every ancestor who lived against the grain; individuality stitched into family legend.

7. The Rusted Key — stands for journals locked, thoughts hidden, stories waiting to be opened with the right generation.

8. The Faded Ticket Stub — history’s cost of wonder: the price of the first movie, the first train ride, the first newspaper headline ever read.

9. The Grain of Wood on a Workbench — homage to the blue-collar hand; the quiet architect of the ordinary day.