Armistice Day - From the vortex of time

Photo taken by Michelle Potter, my second cousin, once removed

Continued from yesterday.

Ross Cole's neice, Wendy, was a solitary woman, born in 1938, who died in 2005. It was her ceiling. It was her box. They were her memories. The curator and I pieced this together after much sleuthing. The curator, Robert, was in the midst of successfully unraveling a 'cold case'.


Not surprisingly, for me, it was more than that.

Earlier this year, we held our first ever Cole family reunion, The Colegium. Ross Cole's father, Cyril, was one of nine children of our 'bedrock' couple - my great-grandparents. Two died in infancy, two were childless, yet for four we had descendants with which to correspond. Only one line eluded me: Cyril Cole.

And here is fate giving me a shove along. Fate telling me never to give up. Fate imploring me to continue to touch the cold headstones of those who have gone before. That remembrance requires mindfulness.

Photo taken by Michelle Potter, my second cousin, once removed

Remembering them

Within two minutes of the torpedo from UB-64 striking the 'Tregenna' in the North Atlantic in September 1940, she had gone to the bottom with the loss of all hands, save four. My father's cousin, Ross Charles Cole aged 24, was not one of those four.

Today, I accept, from a curator at the Australian War Memorial, a box of original letters, documents and photographs that was found in the ceiling of a deceased-estate in Canberra that a real-estate agent was readying for sale in 2009. The curator tracked me down via Ancestry.com and insists that we share the contents with wider family before donating specific items back to the AWM. More tomorrow.