What makes a family?

In genealogy we focus on blood families. Sadly, if you're not related by blood, a lot of times you get shoved to the background.

I'm sure that my great grandfather, John Asher Knight, felt a deep love and affection for Abraham Trubey, the man who raised them after his own father died when John Asher was four years old. While John Asher had Knight blood in his viens, it was Abraham Trubey who took the young boy as his own and instilled all the good things in the man John Asher became. I'm positive his blood father had a lot of good and instilled a lot of positive in him in those four years they had together, but when John Asher thought of his father, he thought of Abraham Trubey.

Abraham did not adopt his step children. But he did raise them as his own.

In my own immediate family, my husband started out as a step father, then became an adopted father to my children. When they think of their father, they think of him. He is their father in spirit and on paper, but not by blood.

None of that can be ignored. He is their father. Just as Abraham was John Asher's father.

That's only part of the story. We have step parents. Blended families. Extended families. Some of the people who we think of as our most reliable family, we don't share blood with. Some of them we do.

There are times as a genealogist when I forget that family is more than shared blood.

It was brought home to me yesterday.

What makes a family? So many things.

Yesterday, I lost a person that I consider a family member. We didn't share blood. However, we shared relatives that shared blood from both of our lines. One niece and four nephews of mine lost their grandpa on the other side of their family. And it's as if I lost a family member, too. I think back and I can't remember life without Gerald in it. First as a part of the community and then as an extended part of our family. I do remember him from before his daughter married my brother. The marriage might not have lasted, but the family tie between our families was strong enough that divorce couldn't shatter it.

Today, I'm not a genealogist. I'm just a human mourning the loss of a man that I thought of as family. A smart man. A creative man, who knew how to get things done and if he didn't know how, wasn't afraid to learn how to do it himself. A crafty old guy. But mostly, a gentle and kind man. He wasn't perfect, but he was perfectly human.

He will be missed by so many.

Today, family is all of us, blood relatives, neighbors, and friends who help celebrate his life while missing him. Our hearts don't care if we shared his blood or not. It only cares that we shared memories with him and his blood family.

Rest in peace, Gerald.