Life History

This is a topic that has been on my mind a lot lately. I don't know why. Maybe it is the spirit telling me that this is something I should be doing. Maybe it's because there's so much to who I am and my experiences on this earth that I don't want it to be forgotten or unknown to my posterity. I don't want to be forgotten. I want my decendants to know what kind of a person I was.
I just ordered a book called, "For my Child; A Mother's Keepsake Journal". I thought this would be a good way to write down things that I have experienced so that my children could look through it someday and see that their mother went through the things they have gone through. Sure, I keep a journal. I have about half a dozen that I have written in through the years. My first journal is the only one that I no longer have. What happened to it? I have no idea. I started it when I was 8 years old, on the day I was baptized, which also happens to have been my birthday. I have a journal that I kept when I was an exchange student in Mexico and I have two from my mission in Bulgaria. I am so glad that I have them. As I look through them I recall experiences I have had, I remember how I felt at the time. I remember the dear friends who I don't have contact with anymore and find myself wondering how they are. These are treasures I will take with me into the next life.
What I wouldn't give for my grandmother's journals! I was told that they are lost but I question their very existance. My grandma died one month after I was married. The only thing I know about her childhood is that butter used to come with a dye packet to make it yellow and that her father would give the pediatrician a chicken for payment durring the depression. How I wish her ghost could come to me and tell me her childhood experiences.
I remember on the eve before my wedding she asked me to come over to her house and put on my wedding dress that my mother crocheted for me so she could see it. She was too ill to come to the wedding. I really didn't want to but I did it for her. How could I not? She told me that the last time she was in the Temple was the day my mother got married and how beautiful she looked. I thought that was sad. I don't get to go to the Temple a lot since I breastfeed and the baby won't take a bottle but I couldn't stay away for that long of a time. She had the opportunity to go to Palmyra, New York where the Prophet, Joseph Smith received the First Vision of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Her eyes welled up with tears and she said, "I feel something here. I feel it. Do you feel it?" She was feeling the spirit and she didn't know it. We explained what she was feeling and she knew it. She had been innactive in church for many years because she had been offended by someone at church and it had been many years since she had recognized the stirrings of the spirit in her heart. I am so glad she had that opportunity before she died. I'm afraid I have been rambling on about my grandmother but she is important to me. I miss her. I wish I could have given her a good bye hug and kiss and told her how much I love her. I was in Oregon when she passed.