My ancestral home in central Illinois

I will be leaving Jacksonville, Illinois within the hour. If it isn't too odd for an American born and bred to say, or pure hyperbole, it is the closest I have to an ancestral home. Both of my paternal grandparents, me Grandpa Joe and me Grandma Alice, were born and are buried here. Me Uncle John whom me Pops called Zeke, and me Aunt Carol are in the same cemetery, in plots directly opposite my grandparents.

Until this visit I have only been here for funerals, though I will stop by the graves to pay my respects as I go. Yet that doesn't mean there haven't been some genuine good times. My brother and I ate breakfast at a dive restaurant, which was a favorite of Joe's, one morning while here for his internment. It was a dive too, but the food was good.

On the same trip, the night before the funeral, me Uncle John, that same brother and I took a walk around the square, then down West College to the Illinois School for the Deaf where our Uncle Charlie, a brother of me Grandma Alice, worked for years. It was cool, and genuinely sublime, to listen Uncle John, who ordinarily was not expansive, talk about his youthful time in Jacksonville and about this or that along the way. He actually asked if we wanted accompany him, and was honestly excited talking about things along the way. He had his demons, and his time in Vietnam didn't help (me Pops always said he was different after the War) but there was a part of him who was truly a good, sentimental man.

Pops liked being here and spoke often of it as well. I need to rack my brain and try to remember and pen some of his stories about coming here too, although I know I've shared one or two along the way. Perhaps one day I'll spend a long weekend here and walk more thoroughly in their footsteps. After all, it is my ancestral home.