Denying the Past
A sad situation
Once again, I am awake in the wee hours of the morning, sitting at my computer in the dark, with something on my mind. Hello, old friend, I know you will listen to my story.
Facebook has become a remarkable tool for far-distant members of a family to either reconnect with one another or to severe all connections.
Recently, I have been in conversations with two cousins who have sought me out for information about their father's history. It seems that their mother, for one reason or another, did not respect her mother-in-law enough to maintain contact with her.
Over the stretch of years, the stories of ancestors, which should have been a part of their upbringing, have been forgotten, so that now, with the parents and grandparents in their graves, the grandchildren seek the answers that their mother denied them all their lives.
My grandmother on my father's side was a stern, business-like woman, who lost her husband in an age when women had few options to support themselves. Though my grandfather had an engineering degree from Northwestern University and provided her with a fine lifestyle, he died of pneumonia in 1924, in an era when pensions and benefits were unknown.
With no money, my grandmother was forced to go into service as a live-in maid, putting her two children--my father and his younger brother--into an orphanage. Though she took them out as soon as she could, they had to stay there for a period of years, while she worked.
Both brothers later married very different women, both strong in their own way. Though my mother often chaffed under Grandma's harsh, abrupt manner, she made sure that we five children always had contact with our daddy's mother. She took us for visits, we were required to write letters and send cards, and she saw to it that my grandmother always had pictures of us. We were an important part of her life.
My father's brother was not so fortunate. He also married a strong woman, who was a good helpmate for him and provided him with three happy children, but she did not get along with his mother, and she refused to visit or acknowledge our grandmother in any way.
Now, everyone involved in this sad little story is dead--except for the children, who are left to wonder, "Where did I come from? Why didn't I have grandparents on my father's side?"
Enter Facebook, that popular social network, which can be used for either good or evil. It can bring families together--or it can tear them apart.
My uncles' youngest daughter has traveled back to New Orleans to trace her father's past, now that he's gone. Her questions have sent me to the scrapbook that my mother made for me years ago. I leaf through the pages, searching the yellowed photographs for the answers she seeks. In the process, I find things I did not know about my own father.
In a conversation with my nephew last night, via "Chat," I had to say, "Well, Garth, it's evident that our fathers were certainly not "Chatty Cathies," (a reference to a once-popular doll on the store shelves).
My own father often retreated behind a newspaper, rather than carry on a conversation, but, I wonder-- Did I ask enough questions? Did I listen, when he talked, however rare it was?
I have learned that both brothers were scarred from the tragedy of losing a father and a younger brother to a disease which is rarely fatal in this modern age of antibiotics.
Dr. Alexander Fleming did not discover penicillin until 1928, four years after my grandfather's death. Until the development of this wonder drug, the life spans of our ancestors were often cut short by a variety of contagious diseases.
As my cousins and I piece together the details of the past, I am grateful to my mother, who had the foresight and wisdom to see to it that I knew my father's mother. I begin to realize the hardships that my grandmother had to endure all those many years ago. I see the forces that shaped her, as she struggled, and I will endeavor to help her younger son's children find the answers to a past that was denied them.
Comments
- -- Posted by Dexterite1 on Tue, Nov 19, 2013, at 6:17 AM
- -- Posted by goat lady on Tue, Nov 19, 2013, at 9:10 PM
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