The saddest part

I think the saddest part of widowhood is thinking of what might have been in terms of Edward doing the things that he wanted to do. Living with him for 54.5 years gave me an insight into the ambitions and thoughts that he had through the years. He regretted not being a scientist but that wasn't really his choice; the times really determined that. None of his class obtaining their Ph.D., and that was most of them, got a University faculty position which in many ways was just wrong. It was the time of the draft dodgers coming to Canada and taking up all those opening spots. I keep asking myself why did that happen? I am in favour of diversity in University appointments but not everyone of them has to be from a foreign country. Surely in this great land of Canada stretching from east in the Maritimes to west in the Pacific areas and even north to the North Pole there is enough diversity that we do not have to hire in great numbers people from other countries to teach and do research at our universities. If anything I think it can be detrimental given how difficult it was to understand the individual teaching us Physics in one of my second year courses. Lovely person of course but a challenge to listen to and his handwriting wasn't that great either. 

But there were other sad things that he was not able to accomplish like more trips into the United States looking for ancestral connections particularly in his Kipp line. He knew by DNA that he was descendant of the Kip family of New York City and prior to that when they arrived it was New Amsterdam. But finding that elusive connection between his 2x great grandfather Isaac Kipp born in 1764 and the parents of that child has proven to be very difficult. There were lots more records to look at and hopefully someone else descendant of Isaac will take on that challenge. 

He did want to go to the Galapagos Islands and that would have been a fabulous trip. Left to late and his illness and COVID-19 made that an impossibility. 

But I also realize that I must not dwell on all of that. He would not have wanted me to do that. He did try to manage and order my life and was successful to a certain extent but now over six months later my younger self is starting to exert herself. I also had thoughts on how I would spend my life but have no regrets on our life together. Perhaps contact with fewer people would have been nice; at best I am a loner and at worst an absolute recluse! However, we did meet many interesting and colourful people through our marriage. 

He also was sad that in the end after all his work helping to build Orleans United that he didn't feel at home there so much. Not sure why really. My not really wanting to be there didn't enter into the equation as he went to things on his own often enough; fifteen years singing in the Adult Choir and ten years as Treasurer certainly did not have me playing any part (except for the hours spent in line at the Bank depositing money/cheques or paperwork for one thing or another). Then there was the bookkeeping which I did help him with since I trained him initially he relied on me to keep it all straight. Well I didn't mind that; it was something we did together I just didn't really like going to the United Church. Which in itself was strange as my mother was raised United Church; I used to go to the United Church with my uncle, his wife and my grandmother when I stayed there on the weekends which was often enough actually. I just never really felt at home there; was never comfortable but on the one side one isn't meant to feel comfortable in Church; one is meant to do God's work; it isn't a social club and that might have been why not sure it is a long time ago now. I am happy at my Anglican Church but then I was always Anglican and love the music and the singing and the prayers; I love everything about it actually. I sang in the Choir there for about eight years as a child and young teenager. I taught Sunday School although I never went to the Young People's Group. It just wasn't my thing to do that. 

 I am starting to think for myself again though and that is good. I did tend to let Edward overrule my thinking just to keep harmony in the home. Although occasionally we did have a disagreement but it never lasted long. At the moment I am interested in getting the Charley family material online and when that is complete I shall turn to yet another project on my list. I do want to get through all the material that I have transcribed and still have nearly 2000 wills to transcribe for the Blake family. Plus the Latin copies of the Manor Books for a couple of places to help me place my Blake line and my Pincombe line. The other two lines of my grandparents - Buller and Rawlings will come into play in the future perhaps but finding the parents of Christopher Buller have proven to be a challenge too great at the moment although there are possibilities these days which is more than there was ten years ago when I last really looked at it. The Rawlings is really a misnomer because my grandmother was illegitimate with her mother's surname being Rawlin[g]s and her possible father being George Cotterill. Matches at My Heritage have been interesting in that regard as I did trace the Charles Cotterill family down from the late 1600s to the interesting William Cotterill who married Jane Sherwood in the early to mid 1800s and then their family. These matches enter into this family at various places with the larger matches in the right places! They were both very young and my grandmother was initially raised by her maternal grandparents for the first six years of her life until her mother married and then she lived with her mother and step-father who treated her as his own child giving her his surname. 

Making a banana cake with over-ripe bananas. Too bad getting bananas to ripen in sequence doesn't happen!