It's A Small World

 

Image taken from FindAGrave.com

I literally had my mind blown last night.  It was a ride on Ozzie's Crazy Train!

As you know, I take care of placing flags on the veterans' graves at St. Michaels Cemetery in rural New Haven township.  I always take Cubby to help me place the flags, but I usually just pick them up myself on my way to or from Pine Island.  

I was going by last night and stopped to gather them up, and at one particular headstone I happened to actually read the name...Howard Bernard Shay...and I stopped dead in my tracks.  

I knew that name, and not just from placing and removing a Memorial Day flag at his stone every year.  

I had seen that name in the family tree I am building online for my mom's dad's family, the Prokasky clan.  I was sure that was the name that I had entered into the tree.  Why had I not made this connection before?!  I told myself I must be wrong.

Nope.  When I pulled up the family tree app on my phone (isn't technology great?), I sure enough found Howard Bernard Shay right there on the Prokasky tree, the first husband to my mother's cousin, Gretta Mae.  Holy small world, batman!

Since some close friends of ours live right down the road from St. Michaels Cemetery, I stopped by to visit them for a bit.  I was telling them about this, and Keith proceeded to tell me that Howard Bernard Shay was a BFD in downtown Pine Island back in the day and that there was even a building on main street named the Shay Building.  

Are you freaking kidding me?!  How stupendously awesome is that??

This...THIS...is why I so much enjoy the genealogy research that I've started doing.  It's also why I kick myself for not asking questions and connecting with family long before now.  

Image taken from 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Six_degrees_of_
separation_diagram.png

For those of us old enough (and we're back to the Generation Gap, eh?) to remember Kevin Bacon's theory of six degrees of separation, doesn't it give you the shivers just a little bit to realize how closely we are all entwined?  

That leads me to the other thought I want to leave with you that I was reminded of, not only by my headstone discovery, but more by my visit with Keith and AJ.  

Hug your kids.  Tell your parents you love them.  Appreciate the people who love you.  Because we are all bound together and need to support and care for each other every single day.  Because it might be the last time you see someone.

God bless you, my family-by-heart!