Perhaps families are like little fireworks, exploding and dying. Genetic sparks of colour and awe which fizzle in the grass. I think of how I grew up, and had a child, who was half raised by my parents too, as we lived so close. Now I'm feeling sad as I don't see my grandson as much as I'd like - they live in Melbourne, and me on the coast, and in a few years I'll die and he'll be grown up with vague memories of his father's mother, and me with all those conversations I never had with my own grandparents.
For my husband, it's worse - his father left when he was 4, had a whole new family, and his relationship with him has always been distant. Conversations at the pub every few years when he goes home, a line or two once a year via email, rarely replied to when he offers communication. He cried like a baby when my Dad died - and misses him still. Him and his sister will never have biological children. The family line stops here, despite having survived imprisonment, mustard gas, the trenches. All those couplings through the thousands of years resulting in the void.
You tell yourself it's the way it is.
I wish I had a closer relationship with my sister. The family dynamic has changed now that Dad has gone. We're defined by his absence, trying to maintain closeness but knowing when Mum goes we'll be scattered, aside from Christmas perhaps. Maybe that's not true. Maybe we'll try harder - again.
There are stories in the family tree we will never fully know. The Italian great grandfather, with one arm, artfully hidden in the single photograph that exists of him. The never-known family of my Slovenian grandfather, who must have thought him dead in the Second World War. The great grandmother that was a laundress with suds on her arm that had a whole first family my grandfather never knew about, but that I found in the records. One child had died of influenza, another with her first husband in a carriage accident. They were labourers and there are no gravestones to mark their passing. All I know of her are suds, the bubbles disappearing on her skin.
My grandfather, an alcoholic. I recall my father saying he was a good man, when he wasn't drunk, and when he'd come home, the brown bottles on the doorstep a signifier for Dad to sleep in the car. I remember him crying when he died. I don't remember much about him - his suit, disappearing into the butchers.
New families burst open their buds in the family tree. Children named for the grandparents of other families, ones not family to mine. No more Fredericks or Sebastians or Elizas, but Neds and Audreys.
They will grow up, and have children, and grandchildren, else not. We become names perched on distant trunks. A story or two, perhaps, if we're lucky. The one who was a bricklayer and moved to Australia and never saw his family again. The one who sat with her dead mum for twenty four hours, brushing her hair and saying goodbye. The one who was a manager at a zoo and had a waste paper basket made of an elephant’s foot. The one who killed his wife, but was only imprisoned, not hung, because she was a known nag. The one who was a nurse under a swastika flag in the Second World War.
All these lives, reduced to fizzling sparks, tiny stories. I pass the stories of my father down and know they won't be kept safe, that they will become vagaries too.
It's something we have to be okay with, I guess. The beauty and awe of our short existence must be enough, the technicolour flowers in the sky, dissipating in the dark. We can't control how we are remembered, who remembers, what is remembered, and how much.
With Love,
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People want to live forever, and if they can't, then at least be remembered. With the development of artificial intelligence technologies, our descendants will be able to find any information about their ancestors in seconds (if they so desire).For example, in all the random videos. All his texts will be analyzed, and a brief portrait of his personality will be compiled.
P.S. Hello, descendants! How are things in the 22nd century? :)
That's wild, and a great start for a story...
And it's going to be worse down the line, the values of a close family is fading away fast. In fact, many young couple do not want to have children even, some even prefer to stay bachelor all along, I wonder, how they would feel in their old age..
Yeah I sometimes wish I had two kids.
that image of the brown bottles on the doorstep hit me, how a small ritual tells a whole childhood, you say it without fluff and it lands harder. as someone who counts things for a living, i keep thinking the only ledger that matters is the small kindnesses we pass on, its what sticks :) even if teh names fade, the feeling of being held and seen does not really go away.
❤️❤️💗💗💖
I think that is part of why my sister likes genealogy so much. She finds the stories and re-documents them for future generations. But much on my husband's side will be lost, and there wasn't a lot to begin with....
It's sad isn't it? My grandpas family - have absolutely no idea who whey are or what happened to them at all. He left Slovenia in WW2 and never returned. For all they knew he was dead. The end.
My siblings and I were just talking about our mum's death anniversary recently and we couldn't remember which year she died till I dug out some I old paper work. Then we realised none of my siblings grand kids has ever met our mum. Us lot are the link between those two generations
It's rather poignant isn't it, and there ain't nothing you can do about it but go on and love who's here and remember what you can about who's not. 😭
I resonated so much with this, my dear (again! how do you do it?!). I definitely feel a lot of this as the older members of my family have died, all those stories lost forever, only guesswork in patches. It seems a shame, all these red threads slipping away.
You have such a beautiful way of phrasing things, especially sad ones, like this.
❤️ i think about this much. The struggle for ourselves and the ones we know to be worth loving to be remembered, when forgetting is inevitable and in-built. So strange.
We all grapple with it, don't we? I guess it's what drives people to get obsessive about keeping memorabilia and doing Ancestry.com. You and I know that impermanence is the way of things.... It's easier to let go when you internalize this reality.
Me and my Mother had a shared genealogy hobby for a few years until we seemed to have exhausted all leads. My hope is to transcribe it to the blockchain before my ultimate departure. That process has begun.
My feeling from that genealogy experience is that family lines are not linear. The family name is, yet that whole concept is pretty misogynist in its origins. It seems to me that it is all about the DNA and not the family name. Perhaps if there was a grandchild in my life my feelings may be different on this matter.
It's actually interesting how many stories come from that DNA tree though. The things I discovered about my grandads mum and grandma that he never knew! Like a previous husband who died in the first war and two dead babies, and you know why she married again without knowing the story, because she was a housekeeper and he was a widow with kids so it was convenient and what else could she do? It's mad my grandad never knew this but Ancestry.com has it's tales...
Any grandchildren possiblities??
My Daughter is nervous due to her Mom having depression arise after each of her two pregnancies. They mentioned a few months ago that surrogacy may be an option. Time will tell with that one. 🤞 😎
Oh goodness, I guess that might deter her but there's always ways to address that these days.
That's gotta be a First Holy Communion photo in the title
Oh good spot there!
I have to write a story with the prompt of grandparents. It will come, but this gave me much thought food.
Ha No more Fredericks. I am supposed to Frederick, there was 4 in a row of first born males in my family tree. I loved family history stuff.
It's so fascinating isn't it. Fred is a pretty cool name these days!
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