Retrospective 2022

The year after my mom died really sucked. I wasn't ready to experience grief like that. I wrote that December just how awful it was. This is the end of the year after my father's death. The grieving process has been totally different. In 2016, the year actually ended on an up note as I landed a job I liked, a gig with a local band I admired and started a relationship late in the year. I can't say the same for 2022. It pretty much sucked all the way through.

LOSING BOTH PARENTS
I'm 54 years old now. I was 53 when Dad died last year and 47 when Mom died in 2015. You'd think a man that age would deal with the loss with a bit of dignity, grace and maturity. But you're never really ready to become an orphan. I think that still strikes you, or surprises you, no matter your age. I've talked to other adults who've lost their parents recently, and have heard similar sentiments from them. It's like losing your sense of belonging, of family.

In my case, that was exacerbated last year by the bad behavior of some bad actors, namely two of my siblings, their spouses and offspring. I had to cut these toxic family members from my life. So, in effect, I really DID lose my family. And that was a slow process that really started in 2015 after Mom's death. We all began to realize, even Dad, that she was effectively the "glue holding this family together." Many of us said it exactly that way, thus the quotes. In the aftermath of her death, we drifted and the fabric that held us all together began unravelling. 

It's not that we loved our father any less, at least my baby sister and I didn't, but he's still not Mom...the glue.

So when I talk about feelings of orphanhood, that really goes to the heart of it. I lost pretty much all sense of family. I'd already drifted apart from Dad's family and Mom's is slowly dying. We lost her brother, my Uncle Gary Larson, earlier this year. A couple of months later, we lost my Great Aunt Ruth Dunning, who was the last member of my grandmother's generation to go. The additional losses this year did not help.

My hope was to turn the tragedy of last year into some sort of renewal for me. I got sidetracked. Instead of using my meager inheritance to start over and move in a positive direction, I got stuck. I blew through the inheritance and ended up staying for months at my sister's house in Indiana. I wanted to be just about anywhere else (not because of her, read on).

LOSING HOME
I've always been a proud Hoosier, proud of my heritage and proud to call Indiana my home state. That has waned over time. Though I've dug into my pioneer roots for a couple of decades, that sense of pride I once felt about being a bona fide Hoosier, like since the time of when that queer nickname was coined, has faded. This is tied in with losing my sense of belonging and of family.

For more than 200 years, my family has called Indiana home. Mom's ancestors were pioneers of Gibson County, one of Indiana's original counties since 1814. Dad's roots go deep in Vincennes, the once Territorial Capital and home to U.S. President William Henry Harrison. We have ties to George Rogers Clark and distant cousins who served his brother in the Corps of Discovery (i.e. Lewis & Clark Expedition). All these connections to the pioneer past gave me a deep sense of belonging to this Midwest frontier.

But now that my family is splintering and fading away, Indiana no longer has the feel of "home." My soul has been longing for my beach...the one devastated this year by Hurricane Ian (Sept. 28th).

The adage says "home is where the heart is." My heart was broken back in September, but Fort Myers Beach (FMB) is still my heartbeat.

If my adopted family there will have me back, I'm coming in 2023.

But all that loss--the loss of life, of family, of home--has made this possibly the worst year of my life. The feeling of being stuck in a place that no longer serves as home, hasn't helped. It only exacerbated my feeling of isolation, loss and uncertainty.

Some of my choices were not made in the best headspace. I was still grieving my father (and my mother, for that matter). I was grieving the loss of family. I was grieving the loss of "home" when the water swept away most of my second home, FMB.

Tragedy and loss has certainly marked (and marred) 2022, as a whole. There are no words that can express the depth of grief or levels of despair, anguish and personal turmoil. This year has definitely tested my patience, my resolve and my personal growth. My mental health has hung in the balance at many times...and I've wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear.

This is me being raw and vulnerable...maybe in a way I'm not all that much on this blog.

I don't hold a massive amount of hope for 2023, but as they say, "it has to get better." Right?

WM C HASSELBRINK OF FRANCISCO INDIANA FOUND!

 FRANCISCO MAN GOES MISSING FOR 20 YEARS
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Just walks away from shop, farm and family - DISAPPEARS!
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DISCOVERED DEAD SOME 284 MILES FROM HOME

This crazy story happened in the first three decades of the 20th Century in a rural part of Southwest Indiana where I'm from. I have marital connections to this family from Francisco, Indiana. It's such a small farming hamlet, one time hub of commerce on the Wabash & Erie Canal, that I'm related to most of it's early inhabitants.

Well, the Hasselbrinck family is no exception. The spelling with a "c" seems to have come from the old country. William Carl, the subject of this made-for-TV saga, was the child of German immigrants, born in 1856. He grew up on a farm in rural Gibson County, outside Francisco (or Frisco, as locals call it). In his 50's, he put together stock and capital to open a hardware store in town, circa 1909. It had been in business with the aid of his son George William Hasselbrinck, about four years when the owner walked away.

Reasons are sketchy as to why, but on a Thursday, middle of September 1913, with no advanced warning, William simply walked away...from his home, from his store, from the hamlet of Frisco, Indiana. 

24 Sep 1913 Evansville Courier and Journal, p. 19

Apparently, the day was 18 Sep 1913 and the talk about Oakland City and Princeton and surrounding towns was about this mysterious disappearance of a 56-year-old man. The article, above, ran in the nearby Evansville newspapers almost a week later. A few days after that, it was picked up by a paper in Madison (IN) this time with speculation as to why.

27 Sep 1913 Madison Daily Herald, p. 2

All up and down the Ohio Valley, local Indiana papers were picking up the thread, like this one two weeks post-disappearance, and each sheds some new light. The article, below, from Spencer County, says that the subject was last seen cashing a $17 check at a bank in Princeton. Where he was headed was not known. A family and community grasping for answers assumes the man was "slightly deranged."

3 Oct 1913 Rockport Democrat, p. 3

After 40 days, the Evansville papers run a picture of William with his physical details and announcement of a $25 reward offered by his wife. This would translate in today's currency to about $740. Later, we learn that his description and this reward were circulated nationwide.

1 Nov 1913 Evansville Courier and Press, p. 6

Then, in 1914, an apparent break in the missing persons case! The body of a man is found floating in the Ohio River near Evansville. It has been drowned for some time and is decomposed, but folks say it matches William's description. The community is cautiously hopeful. This article ran on the front page of the Princeton Democrat newspaper:

20 May 1914 Princeton Daily Democrat, p. 1

The following day, the Evansville Journal reported on the body found:

21 May 1914 Evansville Journal, p. 5

Even the small town Poseyville News weighed in on the matter some eight days later. Interesting to note, the piece of evidence heretofore unknown. William was last seen aboard an interurban headed towards Evansville. That could have been the route our wayward wonderer took, but who can be sure?

29 May 1914 Poseyville News, p. 4

After the excitement and buzz over potential closure to this case, reality began settling in upon the family. His estate was settled and in Sep 1918, five years after her husband died, the alleged widow went after his life insurance company, as reported on the front page of the Oakland City paper.

20 Sep 1918 Oakland City Journal, p. 1

I'm sure interest died down in the immediate aftermath of the body found near Evansville years earlier. The family gave up hope of ever hearing from him again and doubted they'd learn the details of his passing. It was as if he'd just vanished from the planet. There was no GPS or Internet, surveillance cameras or cable news. In fact, news in 1913 travelled very slowly at times, especially in rural areas like Gibson County, Indiana. It must have seemed like all hope was lost.

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of Illinois, almost 300 miles away, William was farming in the community of Glasford, keeping a journal and speaking of his faraway home. When the connections were made, he was already laid to rest. His family had given up on ever finding him more than 10 years earlier. He'd been gone for almost 20 full years!

The story hit the newswires and this United Press article ran in the 9 May 1933 Indianapolis Times on p. 4. This must have given the family some modicum of closure, even if the why's and how's could never be answered. William Carl Hasselbrink would be brought home and laid to rest. In fact, he was buried in southern Gibson County, southwest of his Francisco home, at St. Paul's Cemetery along State Road 168.

I found all of these articles yesterday in a search for relatives. It took me on a wild ride down some rabbit holes, but I was transfixed and fascinated by the details--that a man would just walk away from his home, his family, his life of more than half a century and move that far away and just start over, too afraid, perhaps, to contact his wife or to go home. This would make for great television drama. Who has the number for Netflix, Hulu or AppleTV?