Normally in a Christian family, one becomes a member of the Church at Baptism which in my case was at the age of 74 days. I was baptized at the Church which I attended all of my life until I was married at the age of 20 years and still afterwards I would arrive for early communion after we bought a car as I knew my father would always be there and sometimes my mother was there as well. When I was 3 and 1/2 years old we moved from the house we were living in to a house just around the corner from that particular Church. I can remember every Sunday that parade of the Blake family going to Church. I loved being there; I loved the songs and the prayers. I also loved to hear the sermons as our priest had this large booming voice which would enunciate very loudly points that he wanted to make. But it wasn't until my grandfather died when I was eight years old that I really understood death and dying. As a child I had attended funerals every year of my life that I can recall. They were family happenings when I was a child and they still are. But I didn't really understand the entire concept of death; it was wrapped up in the spirit world and the burial of a coffin and the words being said over the coffin at the graveyard. I did know my grandfather was in there because I saw him and said goodbye to him at the Church before the coffin was closed. He looked so quiet and peaceful and I can still remember looking at him lying there. He was a blacksmith and also did carpentry on occasion. His hands were well worn and often marked with grease or whatever he was working with at the time. He smelled of wood and oil. But this was a Sunday grandpa who smelled of soap with lily white hands but he did still look like grandpa. The priest who buried him was the priest that I knew throughout my young childhood. I listened carefully to the burial service and the discussion of his soul. At eight I hadn't quite captured the concept that a soul was without flesh. I looked for grandpa for months after he died. Sometimes I thought I saw him and would race over but it wasn't grandpa. My grandmother finally convinced me that I would never see him in this life again. So my real Christian life began as I read the Bible cover to cover trying to learn more about where my grandfather had gone and when I would see him again. It quite absorbed my life at that time. A new little sister was a distraction but I was too young still to be much help other than fetching and carrying things. But two years later my youngest brother arrived and from his birth he looked so much like Grandpa. I think in my mind at that time I saw him as the reincarnation of my beloved Grandfather. He still looks like him actually and is a lot like him. He moves his hands like my grandfather did.
When I started into genealogy I had a lot of jumbled thoughts on what my grandfather had said about his Blake family of Upper Clatford, Hampshire, England. At that time Lord Robert Blake was of interest to people and he was talked about somewhat but my grandfather firmly said that we were not related to that Blake branch. He mentioned that the furthest back ancestor that he knew was Nicholas Blake who lived at Old House; that of course conjured up all sorts of thoughts in my brain. But it was trying to filter out what he had said and then serendipity in the form of dreams brought back my beloved grandfather into my mind and just occasionally I would recall things that he had said and when I awoke I would remember it and write it down some 60 plus years later. But Grandpa was an Anglican Christian. He was quite High Church Anglican actually and I do wonder where his thoughts would lie with regard to becoming Roman Catholic these days. I can feel the draw of the Roman Catholic Church; its stability and attachment to the hierarchy of the Church but I continue to tithe to my Anglican Church. My Christian journey is always unfolding in front of me as time marches onward.
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