I started tracing my family tree two years ago. At a time when my world felt like it was falling apart, it saved me in some way. It gave me something to focus on each night instead of thinking about how lonely I felt.

I’d spend hour upon hour replacing the emptiness in my soul with tracking down ancestors. Nothing pleased me more than finding them in the census or locating church records for their births or marriages.  I became obsessed with spending my evenings getting to know my deeper history.

I found a wealth of female ancestors who had come from really hard times and later flourished. They inspired me to go on with my ancestral search as well as my own personal search for happiness – hoping that I had inherited some of that feminine strength and determination.

And now I’m back there. Except all I can focus on right now is death.

I want to know how people died, how old they were, what caused their deaths, who they left behind, and how that impacted the families. I’m scouring records constantly, searching for answers to questions I don’t even have.

For the last two days, I’ve gone one step further by spending time at the cemetery visiting my ancestors’ graves. My determination to find them, in death and in the grave, is taking over me.

Death is surrounding me.