DNA and more

 

Ancestry com. (popular in North America) and My Heritage - with a smaller data (popular in Europe), started as small companies helping people build their family trees, and offering genealogy info on migration.

Next, they entered the DNA industry offering genetic testing kits and analysis. ( Ancestry uses saliva sample, My Heritage - cheek swab). That's quite a fascinating industry! They offer paternity tests, ethnicity tests, health screening tests, and more.

In Israel, My Heritage and its partner Billion Graves (collecting cemetery data) are the dominant genealogical companies. 

I have some experience with Ancestry com.  In 2006, I was trying to locate my grandfather's family descendants in the USA. I started with almost nothing,  but I managed to do a good job using data from various sources, mainly Ellis  Island  and Ancestry com. records.

I have no experience yet with My Heritage, but I often find myself asking questions about its partner , Billion Graves. I suspect the latter buys all the data regarding  cemeteries and graves from the relevant state offices, and  monopolizes the rights . Unlike in the past, when you could easily find  online info, now, you have to subscribe to them, if you wish to get it.

At first, I said to myself, oh, well, it seems  they offer work, employ ׂׂyoung people (probably students), and send them to  cemeteries to take pictures of the headstones. That's an easy, convenient job for them. 

Lately, I'm not quite sure about that. The company has remote control equipment,  and uses various gadgets; the people with the camera could well be volunteers, not paid workers (the fine weather here during most of the year, draws people outdoors, and even cemeteries are an option for volunteering or other sort of activity).

I'll have to do some research. Not that it will help me or others much.  We have to face it : we live in a capitalist society, in which the State gives away its resources placing them in private hands - cemeteries and their dead inhabitants included.  Sad.

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Longevity

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We met at a summer course, and  became friends despite the big age gap beteen us.  She was older and wiser than me, married to an english born gentleman, mother to two charming  teenagers .
A few years later, I left town, and that was it;  we completely lost touch.

 In  March of this year (the month is significant to the story), I happened to be in her neighborhood, and I noticed that their modest  one level house had been replaced by an elegant 2-storey building. I stood near the gate for a while not knowing what to do with myself as I felt the need to talk to somebody. Luckily, a woman came out of the building. I approached her , introduced myself , told her that  many years ago, I knew the owners of the place, and  added that I would appreciate if she could give me some information.

She seemed reluctant to talk to me; however, she uttered three short but valuable sentences. She said : 'she had never met the old couple'; 'she believed they were not alive at the time of the house's sale'; 'her family bought the house from the grandchildren' .
I thanked her and went away.

Back home, I googled the city cemetery list to find out age and date of death. The wife, 85 years old, died in March 2011; the husband, 90, a month later. Well then, I said to myself: they had reached a respectable age... and was about to light candles in their memory.

Something was bothering me, though. The woman said her family had bought the house from the grandchildren; What about the two children, where were they? I decided to 'dig' things further. Browsing, I came upon a family tree, and....deep, uncontrollable, sadness overcame me. Both children were gone long before the parents: the daughter at 32, the son at 41.   Instead of two candles, I lighted four.(We're  celebrating Hannuka feast this week, and I'm lighting candles , so this has brought back to me the sad memory).

That's the  horrific side of longevity; parents might get predeceased by one or more of their children. In our society, it happens quite often as life expectancy has increased during the last decades, but so has the number of accidents and diseases that kill the young ones. It has happened in my family too.

I suppose  what has kept the above mentioned couple alive for so many years after the two tragedies, are the grandchildren. 
However, I know that in some cases, bereaved  parents find no consolation  in grandchildren; in other cases  grandchildren find it hard to cope with this unnatural situation of parent(s) dead and grandparent(s) alive,  and estrange themselves from the latter. 

Tragic from any angle one looks at it.  Life is certainly not all wine and roses.

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