I might not have even connected those dots but for the fact that my father was one of those people that lived his entire life going by his middle name. It was a constant source of crazy in our house. There was a fairly ongoing stream of letters and phone calls that came to his FIRST name instead of his REAL name. It became apparent quickly that these were either junk or very important. There was no middle ground. I also decided that it was a real pain as I got older, and made a mental note to never do that to my child. It turns out that I never had any kids to do that to, but I always thought I would, and it was in my plan not to stick them with a middle name for a primary name. It just gets confusing.
As many of you know, my father was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer several years ago. When my mother and I cleaned out what was left of his apartment, while he was staying with my brother, we found some OLD photo albums. So, one of the things that I wanted to do with him was go through those pictures and get them labeled. I looked through them and didn't know who most of those people were. Egads. You realize in situations like this that when your dad passes that all of that information goes with him.
Cancer is such a destructive thing. Not only is it life-taking, but it is also memory-cancelling. I am not sure that people are aware of that. That is actually an early warning sign of cancer. If your loved one begins to exhibit memory loss, get them tested. The best way I can describe it is that your brain is like a computer and cancer starts pulling out wires to various memories. They just cease to exist. It was an exercise in frustration for dad and me going through those photo albums, and I keenly wished I had known about them, and we had labeled them years earlier. He would have known who the people were and not struggled so hard with it. As it was, the people were familiar, but he just couldn't place them. In other words, he knew he should know them, be he didn't. Uggghh.
Getting back to the "name thing," there were other people he knew by nicknames or what turned out to be their middle names. Apparently this middle name thing ran in the family. I also found a directory that someone created, and my dad bought, for his father's side of the family. Someone went to a lot of trouble to track down anyone that they could and put a phone number to them. If they were deceased, they indicated that as well. They weren't so great about indicating how people "belonged" to each other, but you can't have everything. Anyway, I was trying very hard to look up everyone my dad could remember. Well, he remembered people by their middle names and they were listed by their first names. You can imagine how that worked out. I finally found his father's obit, and it had his siblings and parents listed with their FIRST names. Then dad and I got into an argument about what their names "really" were. I said, "Daddy, I am reading their names off of the obituary. What you are recalling is their middle names. You know how you go by YOUR middle name? Don't you think it's possible that they did, too?" And then it clicked for him. Argument over. It finally made sense.
Parents: For the sake of future generations, stop calling your children by their middle name. Your ancestry will be impossible to trace. It just makes it confusing. And fathers and daughters will spend their final days in frustration over pictures and obits. So, for the sake of all that is good and loving, I ask you while they are young, call your children by their first names. Their children will thank you later.
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