Remember Me...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau

Yesterday was my first day as the Executive Director of the Museum of Old Newbury, known in my lifetime as the Historical Society of Old Newbury, the “Hist,” the Cushing House, 98 High and more. Like many old places, the 1808 brick house in which I will likely spend years has already lived many lives.

At 5:15, I left my second-floor office, with its hundreds of volumes of genealogical records, town directories, maps, ancient liquor bottles, shoe forms, a supremely detailed model of the Chain Bridge…objects at once familiar and exotic, and made my way to the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury where I have spent the last twenty-one years of my working life. I went to say goodbye to a sheep.

As many of you likely know, the farm is home to a group of farm animals placed there by the MSPCA. One of these, a Shetland sheep named Betty, became a local legend.

Betty was a young ewe when she broke her leg. A neglectful owner failed to treat the injury, and she was eventually taken by the MSPCA, her leg was amputated, a rare and risky procedure for a sheep, and she was sent to live at the farm for as long as she had left. The prognosis was guarded – a couple of years, they said. Betty lived for thirteen years at the farm, dying yesterday at age fifteen, a venerable grand dame whose fan club stretched across continents.

I have been writing animal obituaries since I was a young girl. I grew up on a subsistence farm in Canada, and the routine and thoughtless death of animals around me was painful.

I channeled grief into writing, as I do today, seeking to impart dignity to the life of a goat or a dog or a rabbit through a curated remembrance of their friendships and habits. Last night, I wrote Betty’s obituary, noting her tender care of unrelated newborn baby lambs and kids, her bright eyes, her zest for life.

Several years ago, I was researching the life and tragic early death of a young Marine from Newburyport, Eben Bradbury, killed in the Battle of Belleau Wood on June 12, 1918.

There are no close relatives of Eben’s left in the area, but a distant cousin has made it his mission to keep his name alive, a mission that he passed on to me. It brings to mind the idea of the three deaths, my version a slight shift from that articulated by scientist David Eagleman.

The first physical death is followed by a second death when everyone who knew you while you were alive is gone. The final death takes place when your name is spoken, and your life is considered, for the last time. This is why I write obituaries, and this is why I love the Museum of Old Newbury. They are both a sort of ticket to eternal life.

The objects, papers, photos, letters and diaries in this museum plead for attention. People most often bring family collections to the museum to keep the memory, sometimes only of a name or a story, alive. Sometimes a name is a mark on a silver cup, a stencil on a chair, a hammer mark on a weathervane. Sometimes it is a certain kind of peach tree.

I will happily learn and speak the names of the people who have come and gone from this house, and from this land, for centuries, and I hope to introduce you to people who have not been remembered for a very long time – to the paupers in unmarked graves, the enslaved men and women who worked in these houses, the women known only by their husband’s name.

And I will leave enough behind that in a century or two perhaps some enterprising intern will speak my name, and I, too, will be immortal.