A FOOTPRINT OF YOUR LIFE

'T was just this time last year I died
 I know I heard the corn,
When I was carried by the farms -
 It had the tassels on.

I thought how yellow it would look
 When Richard went to mill;
And then I wanted to get out,
 But something held my will.

I thought just how red apples wedged
 The stubble's joints between:
And carts went stooping round the fields
 To take the pumpkins in.

I wondered which would miss me least,
 And when Thanksgiving come,
If father'd multiply the plates
To make an even sum.

And if my stocking hung too high,
 Would it blur the Christmas glee,
That not a Santa Claus could reach
 The altitude of me?

But this sort grieved myself, and so
 I thought how it would be
When just this time, some perfect year
Themselves should come to me.

- Emily Dickinson


When I was growing up in Croatia I lived with a Church and a graveyard at the end of my street.  This graveyard sat in the centre of our suburb which meant we had to use it as a thoroughfare to get from one side of the suburb to another.  I had to walk through it to get to my school. My school operated in two shifts.  The second shift was from 2 pm to 7 pm.  This meant walking through the cemetery at night but luckily we walked in groups. The graveyard and the church was the community central point so to speak.  I used to play in this graveyard with the neighbourhood children in one area of the cemetery where the grass was plentiful.  My favourite thing to do was to go from grave to grave reading the inscriptions the grieving families had inscribed on the head stones paying homage to their departed loved ones.  I was just a child but was always so deeply touched by the family ties of love from these inscriptions.  To me these graves were like footprints of the people who had once graced this earth.  They spoke to me as if they wanted me to know they had been here. To this day I have a special fondness for cemeteries and consider them sacred.  I used to have picnics with my children when they were little in our local cemetery.  They too liked to read what was on the gravestones and tried to remember people they had learnt about.  Some would say this is a morbid obsession.  To me it is just another way the concept of family tugs at my heartstrings.

My parents passed away recently in Croatia within 18 months of each other. I had not seen them for 22 years.  It affected me greatly that I was not there with them in their last days and that I did not attend their funerals.  It was a situation that was beyond my control but one which nevertheless makes me feel guilty and one which has not afforded me closure.  I have imagined what it would be like to return to Croatia now and stand at their graves.  I think it would be heart wrenching and I am pretty sure that one day this will be my reality.  I couldn't do much for them in their final days but I believe I have given them the greatest gift I could give them.  I have performed the savings ordinances in their behalf in the temple of God.

My children don't know my parents at all.  The last time they saw them my oldest daughter was 3 and my other daughter was 6 months.  All they know of them is what I have told them and what I have recorded about them in my family history records.  It's a terrible thing not to know your own grandparents. Now we have excellent technology to close the geographical gaps so that families can be in touch more effectively and so they are not forgotten to one another.  What of the generations to come though?  How do we ensure that our children's children and their children will know who we were and can feel of our influence?  Keeping journals is an amazing way to bridge generations.  Your journals might just be the only scriptures one of your posterity will ever read.  Through your journals, you will not only be remembered but you will continue to have an influence within your family for generations to come. 

"....As Arthur Clarke says, writing is the only means we have of bridging time.  Writing will bridge time and bring all things together.  No matter when a thing is written, we can tell not only what happened and who said what, but the subtlest nuances of feeling, the subtlest thoughts of people can be conveyed for untold thousands of years." (Hugh Nibley)

President Spencer W. Kimball taught:

"We hope you will begin as of this date.  If you have not already commenced this important duty in your lives, get a good notebook, a good book that will last through time and into eternity for the angels to look upon.  Begin today and write in it your goings and your comings, your deeper thoughts, your achievements, and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies.  We hope you will do this, our brothers and sisters, for this is what the Lord has commanded, and those who keep a personal journal are more likely to keep the Lord in remembrance in their daily lives." ("President Kimball Speaks Out On Personal Journals", Ensign, Dec. 1980, 61)

"Joseph Smith '...advised the elders all to keep daily journals'. 'For', said he, 'your journals will be sought after as history and scripture...That is the way the New Testament came, what we have of it, though much of the matter there was written by the apostles from their memory of what had been done, because they were not prompt in keeping daily journals". (Hyrum L. Andrus and Helen Mae Andrus, comps., They Knew The Prophet, p.65)

As Emily Dickinson, the poet of my heart, has so beautifully captured a life lived through her poem quoted above, I hope that my journals have adequately captured my life and that through them someone will come to know God like I have come to know Him.  This is my greatest desire, that my posterity will know and serve the one true and living God and that we will one day together inherit eternal life.