Nehaveigur

In 2018, I met a man in the dining hall of the hotel in Belden who told me that during the Great Depression he had come to California from Canada riding an old truck with his brothers. His parents had stayed behind. For him to actually have been a Canadian Joad, he must’ve been well over 90 years old.

The grandson of John Tyler, the tenth president of the United States from 1841 to 1845, only died a few years ago.

The last recipient of a civil war pension died 155 years after the war ended. Her father was 83 when she was born and had fought in the war.

My grandfather was born in the 1898, citizen of an empire that ceased to exist more than 100 years ago. I’ve never met him as he died before my birth, but his picture hangs on my wall. My own children will live to see the year 2100, four generations spanning 200 years.

And yet, it may be that none of this matters.