Cincinnati Death Record

Sunday morning

During the passing of the sacrament I decided to prep myself for Sunday School by reading the scriptural passage we’d be studying. Isaiah 54. That first verse caught my attention in a visceral way:

“Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.”

I know many women for whom fertility issues are a great source of anxiety and grief. My own three children were hard to come by, but relative to those who want children but can never have them or lose them early I can only imagine the heartbreak. And, given Isaiah’s setting where being barren (even though it may have been the guy’s problem!) was deemed “shameful”, the problem was exacerbated by that unjust layer of societal disrespect.

What a bold claim the Lord makes. And there was more expansive consolation in later verses:

Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called. For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God. Isaiah 54:4-6

For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.…[W]ith everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer…. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. Isaiah 54:8, 10-13

After reading these verses I was dizzy with these extraordinary claims. They were promises of an extreme, outrageous lifting of vision to a Life filled with peace, mercy, kindness, beauty and children to women so aggrieved. Somehow – and who could even imagine how? – God would bless them beyond their imagination. While the fulfillment of these promises may not be in expected ways, these verses affirm that God knows them in this life, knows their hearts and has not forgotten them. For anyone who deals with loss and grief (or other areas in which life have not turned out as planned) these are breathtakingly majestic promises.

Once I made it to Sunday School class I was astounded that the verse our excellent instructor began with was Isaiah 54 verse 2 – the familiar one about lengthening the cords and strengthening our stakes. The inevitable conversation continued about the growth of the Church and the need for our preparation for that. A worthy topic. A juicy one to consider.

But I couldn’t shake the profound consolation that Isaiah uses to frame that whole conversation. The Old Testament isn’t known for being particularly female-friendly so when there’s a passage this lavish, let’s shine some light on it! I made that point two or three (or more) times in class until even I thought I was piping up too much.

Sunday afternoon & evening

After church and lunch, I packed an overnight bag and drove to Cincinnati, hometown of my German ancestors on my Hoffman side. I planned this little junket to coincide with my husband’s being out of town. I had wonderful friends willing to house me for two nights while I tried my best to get those Cincinnati ancestors back across the Atlantic to Germany sometime in the 19th century.

Monday

in the Cincinnati Public Library, my efforts at locating passenger records for my people came to naught. I confirmed the information I’d already sussed out on Ancestry.com. For years I’ve known the names and addresses of my great-grandmother Minnie Seyfried and her parents and siblings in the 1860-1890s. Would this be a fruitless trip?

Then the babies started showing up. The babies who were born and died between census years.

Minnie’s brother John married a woman named Kate. The one child of three who survived in the four years of John and Kate’s marriage was a year old when John died in 1888.

Minnie’s brother William married a woman named Carrie. Their first baby, Bertha, lived for 3 weeks in 1885. Robert lived for 18 days, dying in 1891. Cora lived for 7 months, dying in 1895. Clara died at 9 months in 1901. Only four others of William and Carrie’s eight children lived to adulthood.

How much grief, loss and heartache do those statistics represent? “For the Lord hath called [them] as…[women] forsaken and grieved in spirit…. afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted.”

Since then

I believe that Kate and Carrie were somehow behind the interpretation I championed in my reading of Isaiah 54. It was as though they were sitting on either side of me on the pew urging me, whispering, “Yes, there’s that bit about the growth of the church, but THIS is what you need to pay attention to. Feel our loss. Sense our heartbreak. And thank you, thank you, thank you for helping make God’s extravagant promises come true.”

There is a passage in my patriarchal blessing that reads:
“There are those beyond the veil in your family who have attained to a great desire to receive the blessings of the gospel. The strength of their favor with the Lord will be such that as you seek out their records there will be avenues opened to you that will testify to you to the purposes of the Lord in this work, and you shall partake of that same rejoicing which is beyond the veil in your own rejoicing upon the earth in the accomplishment of this work.”

The passion I feel, the connection I sense, the joy I share with Kate, Carrie and their families (my families, after all!) leave me awed and humbled with this promise fulfilled.

Today

when I kneel at the temple to seal these children to their parents, I will not be surprised if it seems the temple’s foundations are laid with sapphires, and its borders with pleasant stones.