Jim Ward's Genealogy Pages

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"Dear Ancestor"

     Your tombstone stands among the rest;
             neglected and alone
      The name and date are chiseled out
              on polished, marbled stone
      It reaches out to all who care
            It is too late to mourn
      You did not know that I exist
            You died and I was born.
       Yet each of us are cells of you
             in flesh, in blood, in bone.
      Our blood contracts and beats a pulse
            entirely not our own.
       Dear Ancestor, the place you filled
            one hundred years ago
       Spreads out among the ones you left
            who would have loved you so.
       I wonder if you lived and loved,
            I wonder if you knew
       That someday I would find this spot,
            and come to visit you.

(Author unknown)

Many many years ago
when I was twenty three,
I got married to a widow
who was pretty as could be.
  
This widow had a grown-up     daughter who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her,
and soon the two were wed.
  
This made my dad my son-in-law
And changed my very life.
My daughter was my mother,
For she was my father's wife.
  
To complicate the matters worse,
Although it brought me joy,
I soon became the father
Of a bouncing baby boy.
  
My little baby then became
A brother-in-law to dad.
And so became my uncle,
Though it made me very sad.
  
For if he was my uncle,
Then that also made him brother
To the widow's grown-up daughter
Who, of course, was my step-mother.
  
Father's wife then had a son,
Who kept them on the run.
And he became my grandson,
For he was my daughter's son.
  
My wife is now my mother's mother
And it makes me blue.
Because, although she is my wife,
She is my grandma too.
  
If my wife is my grandmother,
Then I am her grandchild.
And every time I think of it,
It simply drives me wild.
  
For now I have become
The strangest case you ever saw.
As the husband of my grandmother,
I am my own grandpa.
     "The Proph"