The story of my family history?

I recently entered Ancestry.com's Branching Out contest. As part of the requirement for entry I was asked to write a short piece on my family history story. It made me think about how this all began in first place...read on.

My family history story is one that started very young and yet too late. As a child, I loved to listen to the stories my Grandparents would tell. In fourth grade, I took my maternal grandfather with his WWII Navy war stories as my show and tell. I didn't know it, but I was bit by the genealogy bug. When my maternal Grandfather was sick and I was away in college, I dreamt of having the chance to interview him one last time and get it on video. After he passed away, life rolled on. I graduated college, got married and then another sickness. This time it was grandma. It was pancreatic cancer, stage 4. In her favorite recliner, still in her pajamas, Grandma struggled through reading a storybook on tape to preserve her voice and sickly image. I know now, no one really wants to be remembered that way; but she knew it meant the world to me and never mentioned she'd rather not be on video. After that, I have done what I could when time would allow it.

Fast forward to the present, 10 years after Grandpa's passing and I finally have a good start at my family history. A great uncle shared a wealth of information on my paternal lineage; a cousin thrice removed shared great detail on my husband’s mother’s side. I have some great family stories from my mother and her 8 siblings, and a few great aunts and uncles left whose brains must be picked before the Alzheimers steals their memories from them and us too. I have found many census records and located some family treasures within the family.

But my story isn’t complete. The family treasures have led to more questions, the yearning for more answers. Some online records seem to indicate perhaps the dry goods store my maternal grandfather’s family owned, whose ledger books are still held by my mother, might have been passed down from the generation before where we thought it began. The notes in those ledger books are priceless. Hand written in the margin “family – will never pay.” Who are these mysterious “family” members? How are they connected? Where do they all fit in?

Oh, if only I had unlimited time and resources!