Since my retirement I have pursued a hobby that I have always wanted to do, tracing my family tree. This is the only thing at times that keeps me going - I get carried away for hours researching my ancestors & it takes my mind away from this dreaded disease.
Amongst many interesting characters in my tree, I have found a very distant relative who, at the age of 4 in 1856, journeyed from Bradford, Yorkshire to the USA after his parents were converted to the Church of the Latter Day Saints. His mother died in childbirth not long after, his father remarried and then later died whilst travelling on a wagon train to California to be a gold prospector. William ran away from his 'wicked stepmother' at the age of 11 & had lots of adventures before settling in Utah. He was a clever man, he taught himself telegraphy, learned several languages including some of the Native American dialects, and put himself through medical school. He became a doctor in a small town in Utah - a little like the Waltons - and lived with his 4 wives & 24 children! He was well loved by the community as he was generous with his medical skills - those families too poor to pay were never chased up to settle their accounts. He died of flu in 1920 in the GreaI Flu Epidemic contracted whilst tending his patients. I think that the creed he lived by and had printed on small cards to give to his friends, is beautiful and I am transcribing it here in the hope that some of our community will take comfort in its words and will use it to live life to the full.
' Don't keep your fountains of love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead; fill their lives with sweetness now. Speak approving and cheering words, while their ears can hear and while their hearts can be thrilled and made happier by them. The kind things you will say after they are gone, say them before they go. The flowers you mean to send for their coffins, bestow them now and so brighten and sweeten their earthly homes before they leave them. If my friends have sweet perfumes and sympathies and affection which they intend to bestow upon my dead body, I'd rather they give them to me in my troubled and weary hours, that I may be refreshed and cheered while I need them. I'd rather have a plain coffin without a flower, a funeral without a eulogy, than a life without the sweetness of love and sympathy. Let us learn to anoint our friends beforehand for their burial. Postmortum kindness does not cheer the burdened spirit. Flowers upon the coffin shed no fragrance over the weary way by which loved ones have travelled.' William Brigham Parkinson 1852-1920
