About a week ago I remembered that I was right about the time of an anniversary—within a day or two of it. It got me thinking about all the things that have happened in the Augusts of my life. That’s not to say all momentous things happened in August. I met the woman I would marry in May, and we were married in January. Our children were born in January and April. All but one of our various moves happened in other months. Yes, the entire calendar is filled with important things, spread out.

But, it seems to me that August has claimed more than its fair share. Several of these events are wrapped around my genealogy research, so are not really a result of outside causes.

Here they are, in the order they occurred.

• August 19, 1965: My mom died. I was 13.
• August 2, 1990: Iraq invaded Kuwait, which was my expatriate home. We were in the USA on vacation at the time, and couldn’t go back as a family, though both Lynda and I got to go back, recover some things of our life there, and say goodbye.
• August 26, 1997: My dad died, at age 81.
• August 1998: I don’t remember the exact date of this one; it was toward the end of the month. Using clues I found when we cleaned out Dad’s house after his death, I made contact with my mom’s family. She was an only child and supposedly had no cousins. In fact, on her mom’s side, she was one of 11 first cousins plus 5 step-first cousins. I had my first phone calls with them in August, and met the first ones in November.
• August 13, 2005: I was contacted by one of Lynda’s cousins, a first cousin once removed, to share genealogy information. I had this woman’s name in a file based on what Lynda’s dad left behind, but had no idea how to contact her. She found me based on my posts on various genealogy internet sites. This was a branch of the family I had little information on. Now I have it complete.

• 

  August 11, 2014: A cousin in New York—one of those 11 first cousins of my mom discovered in 1998—contacted me, saying she had been contacted by a woman who had been adopted at birth but who, DNA testing revealed, was related. Looking at the data, it appeared my mother was her mother. I talked with the woman the next day and we began the process of confirming what the data suggested. Sure enough, DNA confirmed she was my half-sister. That confirmation came on September 1, 2014. Missed August by a day.

• August 2015: No longer able to live on her own, my mother-in-law came to live with us.
• August 2017: I’m not sure the exact date, but probably before August 10, using DNA triangulation, I was able to determine with great certainty who my mother’s father was. Before that I had a name, given me by my not-always-truthful grandmother, but had reached a dead end confirming it. That confirmation came when three of us had certain common relatives on 23andme. That allowed me to know what to search for, and in a matter of two hours I had found many official documents about my grandfather, including his World War 1 Canadian military record. That gave me 13 new first cousins (well, half-first-cousins, but let’s not be picky) and numerous other relatives. I haven’t put together the full list of my mom’s first cousins. DNA confirmation of this information came several months later.

So there’s the list. I don’t know how they strike you, but to me they are all momentous events.

But, am I over-thinking this? Might I not find, if I searched my life, that each month would have it’s collection of momentous events? Perhaps. For now, however, I’ll stick with August as the pivotal month in many of the years of my life.