Lisa Louise Cooke: 0:00

So for the first time she was in kind of my neighborhood. You know, she was in our town and she reached out to me and said I hope it's not too late, I would love to see you. I'm in your town now, bring the grandbabies. And I'm like, of course, of course, yeah, it doesn't matter what has gone under the bridge If somebody puts that branch out there. You know, this is one short life, let's grab it and do it. Stories that.

Crista Cowan: 0:30

Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America Tales of immigration, migration, courage and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover, from sea to shining sea, the stories that that connect us. So join me for season two, as we discover, from sea to shining sea, the stories that live in us. This season, as we talk about the different states in the United States and the stories that connect us to those states, there's some stories that are going to be told where people have deep roots in a place and deep connections to a place going to be told where people have deep roots in a place and deep connections to a place. And there are some stories where it's just a moment in time that connected you to a place that had so much significance to you. Today's story is the latter.

Crista Cowan: 1:35

My guest today is Lisa Louise Cooke. She is a genealogy colleague of mine. I've known her for more than two decades. She has a podcast called Genealogy Gems and she's been podcasting for 18 years one of the very first genealogy podcasts in this space and I've known her for all this time and associated with her at genealogy conferences. But I have never heard her story quite like I heard her story this time. She shares a really beautiful story of connection, but also a story of disconnection and how hard and messy families can be sometimes and how, if we're willing to listen, there can be some fortuitous moments that guide us back to each other. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Lisa Louise Cooke and listen out for her connection to the state of Arizona. Well, lisa, thank you so much for being here. I'm excited to have this conversation with you and to hear your story. So thank you for being here.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 2:40

Oh, thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here, and with your beautiful new studio. Oh, my gosh, I know, isn't it fancy? I love it.

Crista Cowan: 2:50

Well, we are in the middle of, or near the beginning of actually doing a whole series about America 250 and just hearing stories about different families from different states and connections to different places across the country. But before we get into your connection to a particular state, I would love to just hear a little bit about your genesis into family history. What was it that got you started and where did that passion come from?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 3:21

It goes way back. It's wild when I think about it now passion come from. It goes way back. It's wild when I think about it now. It started with my maternal grandmother and it was a conversation that happened when I was about eight years old and I don't know, but I'm pretty sure my parents like dropped me off to get me out of their hair and so I was hanging out and staying at my grandmother's house for a couple of days and I remember it was a very small house and there was a they called it the back room. It was always very dark, but it was a room that they had added on after they had originally built the house and my grandmother was working in the kitchen. So I went in the back room to entertain myself and wasn't much on TV in those days. So I plopped down on the floor and I was looking at the bottom shelf of this floor to ceiling bookcase that she had, and what was interesting about the bottom shelf was there were all these kind of old, black, dusty scrapbooks that looked very different than all the other books on the bookcase. So I pulled one out and I start looking at it and I'm thinking my grandmother was a shutterbug. She took so many pictures and it would be, you know, a lot of them of me. And I'm looking at these people going who is this? Why are they black and white? What's going on? I mean, I didn't recognize anybody.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 4:35

So I really vividly remember, walking down the little hall. Grandma she comes out, as always, flips her kitchen towel over her shoulder. Grandma, she comes out, as always, flips her kitchen towel over her shoulder. What do you need, sweetie? And I said who are these people? And how come they're not in color? And she's like oh, what are you looking at? She looked at it. Come here, and that was my grandma. She would stop anything in that moment and you were the center of her world. And she sat me down and you were the center of her world. And she sat me down and I remember she grabbed an old sheet of paper off of my grandfather's little end table and start scribbling Mikulowski and she's like I'm not sure if that's right. And I'm like what she says? These are my people. I said I'm your people. And she's like no, these are, you're my people, but these are our people, because this is my mama and my papa and my brothers and sisters.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 5:31

I just remember the look on her face and she was a little mortified that she didn't know the exact spelling or pronunciation of her mother's maiden name, but she thought it was something like Michalowski mother's maiden name. But she thought it was something like Michalowski. And she started to write Papa and he had an uncle in North Dakota somewhere and there were seven brothers and they were from Germany and she just, and I to this day I still have that piece of paper and I looked at that and I thought, well, that's fascinating, because I'd like a bigger family, that would be wonderful. I had one sister. And then I looked at her eyes and I could just see her kind of going back in her mind about this and I thought I'm going to find out what her mom's maiden name was and I'm going to find out how you spell it.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 6:21

And it just ignited this fire in me that I felt like I had found something I could give back to the woman that I loved more than anything on the planet and who had given me so much and so much love and so much attention. And that's kind of what I did Over the years. I went to libraries back when we did it all on paper from about the age of eight years old, off and on, picked it back up big time when Roots came on TV. You know we were all just passionate about that. I'm like I'm already doing this and I got his book and later got to see him speak which was amazing, alex Haley and really that all led to eventually realizing this is what I love, this is what ignites a passion in me and, most importantly, because I feel like I could give back to my family and to my grandmother and I could expand my family. And boy, if there were some way to make this a career, I'd sure love to do that, so I did. Well, you figured that out, yeah.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 7:33

Yeah, and that was funny and that happened because years later, when my kids were in school and in high school and everything, I ended up going to the local family history library, had a little more time again to do more research, but this time we were all on computers and things and I had figured out how to do a Freedom of Information Act request and I'd gotten some immigration paperwork that nobody ever had seen in my family of my grandmother's parents who had immigrated from Germany in 1910. And so I went and I was talking about the library and the woman looked at me and she said, oh, that is such a gem. Can I make a photocopy and pin that on the bulletin board so everybody can see it and maybe they could do it? And I remember watching her pin that, thinking I'm going to need a bigger bulletin board Because I didn't realize I'd come across something that they didn't know how to do, necessarily there and I could teach people and share at least what I've been learning all along the way.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 8:37

And then, a year and a half later, my kids gave me an iPod I think they called it, yeah, an iPod and I discovered podcasts and so I did a search. I thought, wow, anybody could do this. So I did a search on how to make a podcast, found a podcast. I mean, this is back in the day when I launched my show. I was on the front page of Apple Podcasts. There were that few. This is 2007. So it kind of launched from there. Genealogy gems.

Crista Cowan: 9:13

There you go. That is quite the story, and I love not only the story itself but the way that you tell it, because you have been on a journey that was informed by that day in the back room with your grandma. Where was your grandma living at the?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 9:27

time she was in Stockton California and that's where I was born as well, living in a little house that they built when they found out that she was finally pregnant with my mother, their first child, and that was a really big deal for them, and they lived in that little house until they passed.

Crista Cowan: 9:49

And did you live near them for most of your growing up years or all of your growing up years?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 9:55

We only lived in Stockton for a couple of years and then we moved to Modesto and people might know Modesto, California, because the least American for feeding.

Crista Cowan: 10:04

Lisa, I grew up in Turlock.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 10:06

No, really I did. Oh my gosh, awesome. Well then, you know the home where Modesto is. Oh, modesto, they'd cruise the McHenry Avenue, yeah, cars. When I was about probably right after that incident with my grandmother, we moved around I don't know, 1971, to Washington State. So I grew up in Tacoma, washington, my kids were born there, and then we moved all of them back to California, to Central California, and raised our children in San Ramon. So, but the neat thing was, even after we moved to Tacoma, which is you know what an 800-mile drive, my grandmother would get in the car by herself and drive herself to come see me if I was going to be in a play, because I did a lot of theater and my grandpa didn't want to travel, and so she's like, well, see ya, and she'd drive all the way straight through and come and see us. Good for her.

Crista Cowan: 11:11

That's amazing. How long did you have her with you?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 11:15

She passed after my first child was born. Vienna was about six months old. Vienna was about six months old and that was amazing because I'll remember, I never forgot she ended up in the hospital. She'd been a maternity nurse her entire life. She helped deliver me and I was determined to get to the hospital when I found out how ill she was. And we were on a plane landing in San Francisco and the plane got hit by lightning and I've got my six-month-old baby in my arms, you know, and the fire trucks are coming to meet us on the tarmac and I'm like that's fine, but get out of the way, we're going to the hospital, and yeah, and then she passed shortly after that.

Crista Cowan: 11:57

Wow, so you had her for a long time. A lot of people don't have their grandparents that long.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 12:01

Yeah, yeah, really fortunate, and so fortunate that she got to meet her great-granddaughter, because my daughter Vienna, I named her middle name Louise. My middle name is Louise, obviously. My mother's middle name is Louise, as is my grandmother, alfreda Louise, and we were all named after well, I thought her mother, so Louise Nikolowski. I thought, wow, that's a lot of generations. Come to find out through family history research there's 11 generations.

Crista Cowan: 12:36

What In a row? Yeah, that's amazing. Wow, wow, that's really incredible.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 12:42

And I have a granddaughter with the middle name Louise now. Well, I'm glad they're keeping it going.

Crista Cowan: 12:47

Yes, that was so fun. So you have a little bit of a story and I don't know the details. So I'm asking this question kind of blind, but like about a rift in the family and I don't know how comfortable you are talking about that. I often say all families are messy and they're all kind of messy in their own way. Families have always been messy. That's nothing new. I think a lot of people tend to feel maybe some shame around some of that messiness sometimes. But whatever you're comfortable sharing, I'm curious to know about that story.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 13:24

I'm fine with sharing it, and I think my parents would be too, because they are all messy and I think anytime I've shared my own story then other people go oh okay, then we're not. Yeah, I'm all right. There's nothing really bizarre happening to me alone that many, many people go through situations you know. To say I'm a child of divorce, of a divorce, is an understatement. I'm a child of, I think, three divorces. My parents divorced when I was 13. My mother remarried three months later. My father remarried about a year later. They all divorced again almost immediately and each have now remarried again and are still with their spouses. So I had three divorces by the time I was 21 and getting married that I had lived through, wow, yeah. What happens with divorce, as people know, is I mean, I'm sorry if this is a radical statement, but no child goes unaffected by divorce.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 14:29

You know you can say, well, they're going to be better off because we're not fighting. Figure out how not to fight if you can't, because there is no way. You're not. Finding that the impact on the children is just really devastating in so many ways and everybody responds differently. And I have such a heart for anybody who has gone through that or is going through that, because there is an impact one way or another, as there is with everything that happens in life. But by the time I was getting married, like I say, when I was 21, my mother, you know, had gotten very busy with her own life pretty much after the divorce. They both I mean everybody, did. I had one sister, a father and a mother and they all kind of just went their own way, you know, and I ended up raising myself pretty much through junior year. Where were you living at the time that your parents were divorced?

Crista Cowan: 15:21

Up in Tacoma in Tacoma Asia, and did your parents both stay there or did they go elsewhere? They?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 15:27

did, which was a good thing, really good thing. They both stayed there, but I ended up going to work, you know, lying about my age and getting a job at 15 and a half so I could start making some money and be able to get myself around and get a car. And you know, you learn you grow up really fast when there's nobody at home. Yeah, so, and you can imagine, with parents that aren't happy with each other and unfortunately it was a very unhappy divorce there's a lot of pressure for the child, you know, and what ended up happening was I ended up kind of separated from my father and that relationship just kind of broke away. My uncle ended up walking me down the aisle when I got married and you know, it was just really challenging.

Crista Cowan: 16:17

Prior to that, had you been close with your father's side of the family? Did you know those grandparents I loved and adored his father.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 16:24

Unfortunately, he died in his 50s on a treadmill, taking a stress test for he was going to have a heart attack, you know, and he did. Yeah, my grandmother was a very I didn't know it at the time. I think you'd call it OCD. Now she was very OCD, she was very proper and she, you know, we called her Grandmother Moore and she just wasn't involved. She was the opposite of my maternal grandmother, who was just hugs and kisses and hands on and you know, the whole thing, which is fine.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 17:02

I just I always recognized that she was just a very different person and they had moved in the 40s from Oklahoma to make a better life in California and so she was very, very conscious of her home needed to be perfect and they needed to strive to do well, and her son was going to go to college and they were not going to be Okies the rest of their life and so that you know. So I wasn't close to her, but I have letters. I saved every letter that she ever sent me, you know, and birthday cards and that kind of thing.

Crista Cowan: 17:35

Yeah, it's interesting as genealogists how we treasure those things, even when the actual relationship may not be as warm. The artifacts kind of become almost a substitute for that relationship and we cling to those little pieces a little bit sometimes.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 17:52

Very wise observation because you know if you walked into my home you'd say, wow, how did you end up with all this stuff? You know I hung on to things as a kid. You know you cling to what you can get your hands on if you're losing things. So you know word gets out that you're the family historian and pretty soon, every time somebody passes, you know, everything comes your direction, which is great, and it's amazing for me as a family historian. So I'm fortunate to have many things in my home that belong to people I love. Yeah, yeah, well, yes, you are fortunate to have many things in my home that belong to people I love.

Crista Cowan: 18:24

Yeah, yeah, well, yes, you are fortunate to have that. Not everybody does. Some of those things get lost through all sorts of circumstances and particularly when there's divorce in the family. I think you know I've had families members of my family where the new wife has just thrown everything out photos and baby books and it's heartbreaking when you realize the loss of some of those things that you know had people just had a little bit more grace or patience could have been saved.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 18:53

Or an understanding that this too will pass. You know and I often talk about this when I do like a keynote at a conference or something, and I've been saying this for years, and that I love to cross stitch and I think of family histories so much like a cross stitch and really building your family tree is like a cross stitch or a tapestry. You know, as you're doing it, other people look at it and they go what are you doing? What is that ever going to be? You know, because it's all these little X's of color that don't seem to make any sense. And when you lay it down and they walk past it, all they see is this mess of threads on the back, and that's kind of what life is like. It's all these little individual threads, and the beauty of a family tree is we actually get to turn that over sometimes and see the bigger picture.

Crista Cowan: 19:46

Yeah, that's beautifully said and I love the imagery of that, the tapestry imagery. I often talk about family history as a jigsaw puzzle that you're putting together without the picture of the box right, trying to fill it in. Another analogy that I've heard is the stitching together of quilts, right, like kind of some of those crazy quilts with pieces that you're like you know you have all these scraps and how are you ever going to make that work? You have a family story about finding a quilt. I do.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 20:15

It was miraculous in many ways and going back to when I first got married and started having children, I can't even quite remember how this happened, but I know my grandmother reached out to me my father's mother and he had moved her from Stockton, again divorced Talk about divorce. Okay, in my family we do it creatively. My grandmother divorced my grandfather and married his brother what? And then she divorced him years later and my, my father moved her up to Tacoma where he could put her in a small home and have her nearby, and so for the first time she was in kind of my neighborhood. You know, she was in our town and, um, she reached out to me and I hope it's not too late, I would love to see you. I'm in your town now, bring the grandbabies. And I'm like, of course, of course. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't matter what has gone under the bridge If somebody puts that branch out there. You know, this is one short life, let's grab it and and do it.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 21:25

So I went over and started visiting with her and each time we'd visit she would pull out a couple of photos, a couple of more photos and I I got the sense I think she was worried I wouldn't come back. So she just trickled them out to me you and she said this is your grandfather's chair, we're going to have to get that to you eventually, and this is my sewing machine and we're going to have to get that to you. I'm like you don't have to give me anything, it's okay, but I love the pictures. Can I take pictures of your pictures?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 21:57

So she started telling me the story of the family and she was really worried. She relied on my father very, very heavily for everything at this point and she said we can't tell your father that we're meeting. I know that you guys are, you know, I don't even know what the right word is, but our relationship was broken. And she said please, please. You know I can't have this. Go back to him. I said don't worry about it, that's okay. Was she afraid that he would stop you from seeing you? She was afraid he would be angry with her.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 22:35

I think with her and that somehow, um, he had been so loving and so willing to rescue her and put her in a home and had a home built for her and made sure she was safe and secure and taken care of. And I think, knowing that she hadn't invested as much in relationships, whether with me or my father or anybody you know, you're not always sure you're on really, really solid footing with somebody and I think she was very afraid about my father wasn't a violent man or anything like that. You know he's not Sure, but she felt vulnerable. She felt vulnerable.

Crista Cowan: 23:12

Yeah.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 23:13

And didn't want him angry. She was not an emotional person and so I said, no, that's okay. So we visited and then a couple of years later, I just didn't hear anything and I waited and I tried to reach her. Couldn't reach her. I thought I don't know what's going on and one day I got an email from my father.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 23:38

I don't know how he got my email address and he said I just want to let you know your grandmother was moved to Arizona but she's passed away. We're going to have the funeral on Saturday and just want to let you know, just out of the blue, out of the blue, completely, I didn't even know he'd moved her.

Crista Cowan: 23:55

Yeah, moved to.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 23:56

Arizona. And where were you living at the time? Were you still in Washington At that point? We were in San Ramon, california, san Ramon, california, and this is where you just go. Oh, I have an amazing husband. I came out of the room and I was crying. I said my grandmother passed and my dad reached out to me and he said I'd really like to be there. He's like done, we're doing it. I said we have these three kids. And then he said I'd really like to be there. He's like done, we're doing it. I said we have these three kids. And then he's like we have a Suburban, we're going to pack it up. We can drive straight through. We'll be there in time. And we literally did just that drove straight through.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 24:40

And I remember at the cemetery they were at the grave sign. She didn't know anybody there. So it was basically my father and his wife and the minister and maybe a neighbor. And I came walking across the grass and I could hear my. It was like everything went quiet and I could hear my father say that's my daughter. And I thought, well, he didn't say oh no, so I just kept walking and your husband and kids were in touch and my husband and kids are coming behind me. And I just hugged him and we were quiet.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 25:26

We finished the service and he said wow, I'm surprised you're here, I'm so glad you're here. And I said I'm so glad too, and he's like, and his wife, who's adorable, came and said you know, well, we're going to have, you know, just a small little get together. Her home it's just down the road here in Arizona, and why don't you join us? Come and join us, do you have time? I said yes, of course. We just literally rolled into town and so we went to her little house and it had turned out that they had bought a winter house I guess they're snowbirds, so they had bought a house in Arizona, which is the connection as to how they ended up buying this little house so that they could have it next to them from my grandmother.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 26:12

And we went to the house and it was a surreal experience because all this stuff that I recognized- you know, I remember it so clearly from the house on Princeton Street in Stockton so many decades before, and I saw this cookie jar up on the refrigerator and I said, oh my gosh, there's her cookie jar. And his wife, claudia, is like, oh, you need to take that. She's your grandmother, you need to take that. And I said, are you sure? Oh, yeah, yeah. And I said, oh my gosh, and you know she had these silver canisters for flour and sugar and still as pristine as the day. I remember her getting them and so pretty soon she's like well, you should take that. And she's like Lisa, if you have a few minutes, you should go through the house and see what you want, she said. And my father walked by. He says yeah, because whatever you don't want we're putting in a garage sale. It's gone. And you walked on and I said okay, and I looked at my husband and he's like I'll get the U-Haul. And I did. He got little trailer, hooked it up to the back of the Suburban and you know I walked around the house and I got Grandpa's chair and the little sewing, the little portable sewing machine that she had, and some of her stuff, and as I was walking around I ended up in her master in the master bedroom, and I had this intense feeling.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 27:51

She was there with me and the whole time we'd been visiting my. My dad and I were doing this back and forth in the hallways in the living room and forth in the hallways in the living room, but we hadn't spent any time together and I had this. I could almost it's like a voice, but you can't hear it, but you know it. She's saying you need to find it, you need to find it, it's here. And I was like what? So I'm looking and looking and there, you know, there's nothing under the sink in the bathroom. There's nothing under the sink in the bathroom. There's nothing under the bed. I'm looking around. There's really nothing heirloom-wise in the room.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 28:30

I ended up finally opening the closet and I see all these dresses she's kept every beautiful dress she's had since 1955, and all the shoes and everything. But you know, it's not stuff that I can use. She was a tiny little thing and, um, I wanted to close the door and I just had this overwhelming intense feeling. I almost wanted to cry. I felt like I was failing and I didn't even know what I was looking for and my dad walked in Now this is the first time that we've ever been alone together since this happened.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 29:06

And he's like did you get everything? I said I don't know, but I have this distinct feeling there is something I'm supposed to be getting and I don't know what it is and I can't find it Really. Have you been through everything? And I said yeah, I think so. He says what about the closet?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 29:22

And we opened up the closet and I'm looking at all these clothes. I'm like, yeah, no, I don't need any of these clothes. And there was a bunch of suitcases along the bottom. He's like, well, what about these suitcases? And I said, well, I mean, I lifted them and you can feel that they're empty. And he went and reached and picked one up. He says this isn't.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 29:43

And I said what I thought? I literally picked them all up. I guess I gave up because they were all just empty suitcases from the 40s and the 50s. He says, well, let's see. And he pulls it out and plops it down the bed and opens the latch and here's this crazy quilt that's been pieced together and you can see almost immediately. It's like flower sack material right From the 20s and the 30s beautiful colors, you know, but it's not fancy stuff, it's not new.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 30:14

This is an old, pieced together in the crazy quilt style, and I almost burst into tears. I was just like, oh my gosh, that's what it is. And I my grandmother didn't quilt or anything. I'd never seen this quilt in my life. And I started to lift it and I hear this rustle and I turn it over and there's a note pinned to it and I printed it out. I don't have it. I was going to read it to you. To you, um. This quilt is for ronald l moore. It is the last quilt his grandmother, herring, made before her stroke and death. She loved him so much. I love you so very much, ron. I'm so proud of you all.

Crista Cowan: 31:07

My love, mother, more classic, my grandmother and um probably never said those words out loud to him, did she never?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 31:20

I'm sure, yeah, yeah, and you know she's. She thinks she has to put mother more. You know, like just, but I, but you know she more, anyway. So he looks at me and I look at him. I said well, you should have this. And he starts to unpin it and he says you take the quilt, I'll take the note, and I said okay, and then we just started talking and sharing and reconnecting and I absolutely 100% felt and understood that she desperately wanted my father and I to reconnect and to love each other and that would be her final legacy and really it was my great grandmother's final legacy because she made the quilt and I could just sense from my dad in that moment that he understood it too, even though he's not an emotional guy, and he was just totally understood it and he wanted the note.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 32:31

So it was an amazing, amazing time and it just reminded me something that my mother always used to tell me, which is you need to listen to the voices in you and you need to know and you trust your instincts. You trust your instincts and I always learned that as a girl, but it applies in so many ways. There's so many ways. You know that our ancestors want to speak to us and the noisier we are and the more determined we are to get our way, we can't hear anything. You know, it was a wonderful lesson.

Crista Cowan: 33:09

Okay, so I'm weeping.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 33:11

Thank you, so I'm weeping, okay, thank you.

Crista Cowan: 33:18

I suspect you probably shared this story enough that you were able to get through that. But that was beautiful and the fact that you were so persistent in listening and following those promptings meant that you were able to have that experience with your dad which had you brushed them off or ignored them or not been trained up maybe to recognize them. You know you might have missed out on that, which is heartbreaking to think about.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 33:43

Our lives would be so different.

Crista Cowan: 33:44

Yeah.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 33:45

I mean because we're so close now.

Crista Cowan: 33:47

Yeah.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 33:48

We're just so close now and I don't think that would have happened. I don't know how it would have. Yeah, yeah, we're just so close now and I don't think that would have happened.

Crista Cowan: 33:52

I don't know how it would have yeah, yeah, well, what a beautiful moment. So does your dad still live in?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 33:58

Arizona. He splits his time with his wife between Arizona and Washington State, so we get to go back and forth in between the two and yeah.

Crista Cowan: 34:11

I love that. You know it's interesting because, as we think about this, you know, talking about different states, like some people have deep, deep roots in places and they're connected to the land and the dirt and the earth and the you know, like all of that. But some people like it's just things like what you experienced, like you experienced a life-changing moment in a place and it's so interesting to me that that place was your grandmother's house, surrounded by familiar things, but in a new and unfamiliar place, and yet now you have this connection to that place. That's a little, you know, different than maybe somebody who lived there their whole lives or went visiting grandmother every year their whole life. As you think about, you know, arizona, it's interesting to think about it as a place that has significance to you when it is not really part of any other part of your family history story.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 35:08

Right, Well, and Arizona was a place you know. Growing up in California, you probably did this too. It was all about car trips. We definitely went there on vacation as kids. And it's interesting because a couple of years ago I got a call from my stepmom, claudia, and she said we're in Arizona and your father is sick and he's in the hospital and I'm afraid we're going to lose him and I think you probably need to come out and you know, of course, my husband, we're going, let's go, and so we did, but this time from Texas. And we got there and I think about how he kind of rescued my grandmother and how that really had an impression on me, because he served her and he was so selfless in that and we just dropped everything.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 36:05

I had a lot of stuff going on with genealogy, gems and stuff, and we just dropped it. We drove out there and, I think, following kind of his example, and we get to the hospital and they're pumping him up with morphine and they're about, you know, let him go and he had a severe, severe case of Ramsey-Hunt syndrome, which is a horrible kind of internal shingles that affects all your nervous system and it's like having a stroke, but the pain is just intense. Anyway, my husband, who had been in hospital administration for years and years, kind of knew how the system worked and he started raising Cain and he started getting an advocate. And he started raising Cain and he started getting an advocate and he started you know working levers and we very quickly got him some new care, got him on a new plan. Eventually we were able to move him. While we stayed there about a week we were able to get him stabilized enough to get into a full-time nursing facility that could deal with his ongoing chronic condition, because it was going to be a long haul and he had a lot of different complications. And anyway, it was amazing because they have an amazing medical community there in Arizona for a lot of retirees and I just thought how appropriate to be coming back here and to help him. And now he's back to playing golf three times a week and you know, you'd never know, but I mean it was a year, year and a half recovery and the hardest part was that, as he's coming out on the tail end, I had to call him and tell him I had been diagnosed with breast cancer and that was a year and a half ago and that was probably the first time I ever heard the tears in my father's voice and he's telling his wife I can't talk, I can't talk, I can't talk.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 38:05

You got to talk to her, you got to find out what's going on and so I end up going through. I had a really nasty form of breast cancer and ended up having to do chemotherapy. It was kind of a mandatory part of the whole thing and a side note kind of. Another connection with my grandmother is that one of the things I was doing six, eight months worth of chemotherapy and it's every two weeks and one of the things I was doing six, eight months worth of chemotherapy and it's every two weeks and one of the things that can happen with the type that I was having is that it can settle in your fingers and in your feet and neuropathy is a huge you know, side effect and so one of the things that they do and my doctor said I want you putting ice mitts on your hands and ice socks on your feet.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 38:54

I'm telling you that's harder than chemo Because it takes several hours to get through the whole chemo infusion each and every time and you know it's bad enough that all your hair is falling out and you know you're just losing all your energy, but then my hands are freezing out, and you know you're just losing all your energy, but then my hands are freezing, um anyway. So weeks and weeks, and weeks and weeks of doing this and one day I looked at it and at home I was laying on the couch. I said my ring is gone, my wedding ring is gone, and somehow along the wedding I was pulling those things off. The moment the infusion's done, I'm pulling them off going. Oh my gosh, and somewhere along the way I pulled them off and the ring was lost, my wedding ring. And we searched and searched and the infusion center, but I didn't know how many weeks had gone by. I was so out of it. I'd gotten really deathly ill at one point in the infusion center, but I didn't know how many weeks had gone by. I was so out of it I'd gotten really deathly ill at one point in the hospital and they had to pull me back from that, and that was when I realized, oh my gosh, this ring is gone.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 40:00

Well, for my birthday this year, now that I've just hit the one-year mark of recovery and I am declared cancer-free from my doctor which is amazing my husband took my grandmother Moore's wedding ring, which my father gave me after we reunited, and I'd had it, but I've lost a lot of weight since I did chemo and I couldn't wear it and it would spin around in my hand and you know anyway. Anyway, he went and had it's. It's a band I don't know if you can see it, but it's a band and an engagement ring that were put together. He had a another band made identically, custom made to match the first, so it was bonded on either side and had it resized, and so that is my wedding ring now.

Crista Cowan: 40:53

That's so lovely. I love that so much. What a gift. I mean just, you are a gift. Your story is a gift. I so appreciate you sharing it with us. I think there's a lot of people who will resonate with a lot of what you've shared at different points I think sorry, I'm an emotional mess. I cry. Nobody cries alone in my presence. That's kind of my general rule in life. I've just been so touched by the fact that you feel and recognize your grandmother and the fact that you and your father have been able to heal the rift that was between you and I. Just I think it's so lovely the role that family and family history have played in that story as well. So thank you for sharing that. I know that that's an emotional and tender thing for you, so thank you.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 41:51

Well, I have certainly learned through my years, and certainly this last experience, that nobody goes untouched, nobody goes without suffering, nobody has a family that is perfect, and so, like I say, sharing this story, I just hope everybody takes heart and knows there's always hope, there's always hope for reconciliation If there are fragments in families, and one of the things I used to tell myself as a kid was you know, well, maybe I don't have a whole lot of family here with me now, but I found some super cool people in records who are all in my family and were so brave and just didn't and worked, went through a lot harder things than I did.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 42:34

So, um to me that everybody can benefit from the great comfort of knowing, oh my gosh, you can expand your family, and by learning about them. Uh, it was interesting, I often say, when my dad and I got together in the living room and really sat down and then finally started to talk, he wanted to know what I knew about the family history. So when you don't have anything else in common with your family, you do have family history in common, and that can be the bridge.

Crista Cowan: 43:05

Yeah, yeah, so beautifully said, so beautifully said.

Crista Cowan: 43:12

Well, your story is, you know, it's so interesting because, as we were looking at different people and their stories to connect with different places, this pivot moment that you had in Arizona was so like, so touching, that I wanted to connect you with Arizona, but really we could have connected you with Oklahoma or California or Washington, but as many of us Right, yes, exactly Right, which I think very few of us are all from one place. There are those, but I think it's more common that the American story is one of migration, both immigration into the country and migration around the country, and people coming together. And even you know, like you, with your family moving from Washington to California, to Texas, and your dad, you know, going back and forth between you know, washington and Arizona, like, I think that that's a common story for a lot of people Arizona. As we wrap up, as you think about Arizona and maybe even particularly about that pivotal moment in your relationship with your dad and your connection with your grandmother, what does that state mean to you?

Lisa Louise Cooke: 44:22

It means hope. You know, that's what I think of when I think of that state. I think of the hope of reconciliation, I think of the hope of healing, and I'm really pleased that my dad has hung on to his house he was talking about. He was talking about moving to a different place, but he's like no, I'm hanging on to the Arizona house. I said good, because we enjoy going back there, you know, and a lot of really nice, nice people out there.

Crista Cowan: 44:50

Thank you for spending this time with me and just sharing your story. I just, I just adore you and have seen a part of your heart today and thank you, thank you, for sharing that.

Lisa Louise Cooke: 45:01

Thank you for sharing everyone's stories the way you are. I think this is a brilliant format and I've been so touched by the ones I've already watched on your YouTube channel and I'm just so glad we got to connect. It's never too late, it's not Absolutely. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.