Someone recently reassured me that “a life that touches others goes on forever” – small comfort when you are deprived of the physical presence of someone you love, and that person is deprived of life… but isn’t it marvellous to think that we don’t become extinct when we die… that our stories can extend our lives beyond the confines of our personal experience? I love that!  I suppose that is, in large part, what we hope to do with this collection of letters, to keep alive the essence and stories of family members through anecdotes.

My adored niece and godchild, Gemma, who was born to Kim and Mark 9 years after Daddy died, once vividly recounted to me a memory she had of her Grampa Chrissy, and she refused to believe she had never known him – he had remained that alive in our family, long after his physical presence was no more!  In my Sunday, October 18, 2015 letter I told a similar story about my own fond but false memories – a testament to the power of stories in our lives.

I do believe that a life that touches others really does go on – even beyond memory, in defining family traits, characteristics and behaviours, and also in the wisdom imparted by the conduct of others, the tales told, the events observed and absorbed.  I don’t know what parts of who I am came from the ancestors, but I would hope to have been infected with at least some measure of the courage, joie de vivre, kindness, fairness and decency with which my parents lived their lives.  They were flawed and deeply good people, and I see them in my siblings, and in their children.  And I hear about the impact they made on others whose lives they touched, which has had a hand in the shape of later generations. That all makes me both proud and hopeful.

“Memory is a child walking along a seashore. 
You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.”
Pierce Harris

One love!  

Lisbie x

Ruth Pamer Darwent Punnett and Christopher Alexander Punnett