My Namesake

 The definition of "namesake" is a person named after someone.  I was named after my Uncle Harold B. Owens, born August 22, 1922.  He died in 1941 at the age of 19, just a year or so before I was born in 1943. I have a few pictures of my namesake, a birth certificate, his 1941 high school diploma, and some old postcards from his neighbors and teachers.  In my study I have a framed picture that hung in what was once his bedroom that we (nieces and nephews) remember from our earliest years when spending an overnight with our grandparents.

That’s it!  That’s all I know.  That’s all that has been left.  My grandparents never talked about their  loss and grief, nor did my father talk much about his brother.  And I, like so many of us, never inquired.  Apparently he died of heart complications (whatever that meant back then).  Uncle Harold never experienced these autumnal years that I now live.

My name might have been Ronald, Edward, or Samuel were it not for Uncle Harold’s untimely death.  Funny, I’ve never thought about that much until now.

As  I sort through the “stuff of my life,” trying to decide what to toss and what to save, I find myself thinking about what little I know about my namesake and what little I know about “those who came before me.”  What I do know, and feel most keenly, is that each person in that “family” contributed to my life in some way.  My namesake gave me a name!