I've been thinking about the way disasters such as Katrina can suddenly strip individuals and families of all the tangible testimony about who they were. The waters rise or the tornado strikes and all the scraps of their former existence disappear forever. Or lightning strikes or a rat chews an electrical line...and the house and its contents are gone.
When my father died and my mother disappeared into a nursing home, lost for all time in the mists of Alzheimer's, I came home to New Jersey from Dallas with a huge trunk that had belonged to my mother. It was a rich and miscellaneous treasure trove of my family's existence, on both sides. There were genealogies and photos of relatives of unknown identity. There was my mother's diary, kept during the three years before she married my father (probably a great mistake for her, but fortunate for me!) There were letters, a great many from my father to my mother from age 16 to 25, but none from her to him; letters between my father and his wealthy commodities broker father, testimony to an uneasy relationship. There was my father's first letter, written to his grandmother when he was 6, and asking her if she loved him (a theme of his entire life, seeking reassurance from others about his standing with them). There were my letters to my parents, from college days and the early years of my marriage. There were photos of course, including one of me at age 2, standing naked in a bathtub.
The trunk accumulated my own objects of remembrance, for example, the pictures of my children as they grew up, the pictures that despite good intention never made it to scrapbooks.
There's some pretty dark stuff in that trunk, too. My great-grandfather murdered a man in West Point, Mississippi sometime in the 1880s and fled to Texas, changing his name en route. My grandfather told me this tale in 1963, shortly before his death. The rest of the family, my grandmother and my father included, denied this story, but in the trunk pages from a family Bible are incontroverrtible truth. My grandfather, whom I loved, was a terrible father...and very likely had an affair that went on for many years with a preacher's wife. My parents separated for several months when I was 3. Later, they were back together, but he went into hiding a year later to escape $11,000 in gambling debts. Eventually my grandfather paid his debts and took him into th e family business, but clearly the late 1930s were times of crisis.
I spent the afternoon sorting through the stuff in that old trunk. It's time to organize it, to tidy it up and label things so that if my children and grandchildren want to know some history of the family before they came along it will be theirs to find.
Oh yes, I found a letter to me from my grandfather telling me how much he hated Democrats, especially the Kennedys.
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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument." William Gibbs McAdoo. US Vice-President under Woodrow Wilson.
My family had a small reunion a couple of weeks ago, and a few of us spent one evening going through the volumes of photo albums stacked in our parent's library. There was nothing as intriguing as a murder, but some interesting recollections emerged from those present, memories awoken by those photos.
Gardener, your fortunate to have that chest of lives past. I can't imagine how it would be to have an entire family history wiped out as so many recently have.
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Working "hard," or the perception of working hard, doesn't really mean anything. Sweating, vomiting, and breathing hard could be a good workout or a tropical disease kicking in.-Dan John
Good post Gardener. So many families don't have access to a 'trunk' like yours. My family was not financially rich, but rich in family history. Much of that history still exists just like yours. No real value, but immeasurable value to me. I had the same revelation you did about 7 months after my Dad passed away. An electrical problem in the basement started a fire that caused a tremendous amount of smoke damage. Even though most of the furniture had not been distributed to my siblings and myself, we had removed the family history items. How fortunate we were that they were not there, as they most likely would have been damaged or destroyed.
My heart goes out to those who lost everything. Houses and possesions can be replaced, but there are many things that can't.
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Those that can't do teach. Those that can't teach consult. Deserve aka Gabe
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I am the keeper of our family geneology and have some family events that are actually very similar to Gardners. That is on one side of my family. On my fathers side we only have a couple of generations back because of a Chicago flood.
That part of my family had come from Ireland and Germany and all keepsakes of the homeland where lost. We have a few pages of a family bible but it only goes back to after arriving in the U.S.
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Today's mighty oak was once just some nut who held his ground!
I think it's important to gather some of those family stories and history. There are times I wish I had talked more with my grandparents and great-grandparents when they were still alive. Luckily, my paternal grandmother is still with us, and my aunt and uncle convinced her to write down some of her stories of her childhood -- simple, everyday things like her chore of feeding the turkeys despite her fear of this large male turkey who flapped and squawked and went after her each time, until the day she was frightened enough to grab a stick and hit him.
Little treasures like these can mean so much.
__________________ The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. -- Carlos Castaneda
gardener,
Nice piece of writing and very thought provoking. My wife and I went through some heart wrentching experiences when her father died earlier this year and I can really relate.
"Oh yes, I found a letter to me from my grandfather telling me how much he hated Democrats, especially the Kennedys."
Gee, what insight your grandfather had. LOL
Mahler
__________________ In Fitness & Friendship, MAHLER
______________________________ __________________________ There is no light at the end of the tunnel. You carry the light with you.
My father was very ill from just after I was born and found it impossible to communicate,right up to his death when I was 27.
In tidying up,I found his scrapbook,which begins with a picture of him in a uniform, outside his family home,in a slum part of Belfast, the day he started his first job.
The book follows his rapid rise in his career and newspaper clippings of his various sporting triumphs are peppered throughout.
Pictures of foreign holidays and pretty girls abound.
The entries stop shortly after he met my mother.
Some might see such record keeping as egotistical or strange...but, it allowed me to connect with my father, posthumously, in a way I was never able to do while he was alive.
It also makes me think that I should get off my ass and do some things of note, that I might report to any offspring I may end up having!
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Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. -- Sidney J. Harris
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