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Last week, I opened the box of mementos my aunt had left for one of her daughters. My aunt passed away in 2011.
My father, the youngest child in the family and my aunt’s “ward” after his father died when Dad was 12, probably knew little about his mother’s legacy. According to my father, my grandmother, who was trained as a concert pianist at Cincinnati’s Conservatory spent more time practicing than she did being a mom or taking care of the house. My grandfather prepared dinner for the family when he finished business for the day. Other household duties were relegated to a housekeeper, a laundress and a day cook.
Once Dad left for The University, he never lived at home, full-time again, although visited home often. I’m including this detail because when I opened the box of family ephemera, one of the surprises was a well-preserved piece of sheet music, published by a New York publisher and composed by my grandmother!
I’m sure my aunt was aware, but in her senior years, she may have forgotten. My dad never mentioned it, and we didn’t know to ask specific questions, like, “So, did you mom ever write music?”
After going through the box, I wished we had seen the collection before the last generation had all passed away.
But, I’m not the only one with these kinds of regrets.
A friend who was put up for adoption by his biological parents because of financial difficulty, doesn’t really know how his adoptive parents came to adopt both him and his little brother, 10 months younger. He thinks a man in his father’s carpool had asked if anyone knew of a couple who would like two little boys under two?
He also doesn’t know why his adoptive parents changed his and his brother’s names, given to them by their birth parents. Sometimes questions like these are difficult to ask, depending on the situation.
My good friend’s father flew “The Hump” during WWII, but he never spoke about his experiences overseas with his kids. Not many veterans -- from any wars -- talk about what they did, saw, felt -- once they returned home. All she knew was her dad, during his stay in India, said chicken was the only meat available for American pilots, as cows were sacred. Returning stateside, he never ate chicken again.
Until the recent decade, families didn’t speak of miscarriages or the death of a child. I never heard my mother talk about the baby she “lost” when I was two. It wasn’t “socially correct” to mention these emotionally-charged situations earlier in our history.
Now, thanks to forwardthinking OB-Gen departments and nurses, mothers who experience the loss of a child are encouraged to have photos made with the child, hold formal funerals for the infant and count the child as a member of their family.
Each Christmas, after attending church services and before breakfast, my sister’s immediate family visits the grave of their grandson who succumbed in the womb at full-term, just days before his delivery. I, for one, am happy to see this recognition of a family “angel,” and believe this part of the family history will be talked about by future generations.
Sometimes, distances among families make conversations filled with questions difficult…and there are other reasons younger generations know little about older relatives. However, whenever possible, I would encourage younger generations to make lists of questions they’d like to know the answers to when family visits and/or gatherings occur. I also might suggest older generations to make recordings of their life stories or write down some of the more important events in their lives.
I believe every family, large or small, has a responsibility to “curate” their stories about their time on this earth -- for future generations to know where their families began, their contributions to their communities and, from a strictly practical standpoint, their medical tendencies and genetic inheritance.
