I am seeing all the news about the threat christian nationalists are to our democracy. They are still actively and incorrectly trying to meld America with what their definition of Christianity is, and they are wrong. They are anti-Christian. The House Select Committee regarding what happened January 6th are meeting tomorrow, and I will be watching. I see that it’s being televised.
But I’m not going to go into all that. I mean to do my deep breathing and take a break from venting my feelings about all this garbage around us.
When I was a child, I spent a lot of time with my grandma. She would tell me stories of her childhood, and I loved to listen to her. She loved her brother and sister, who were very much older than she was and had already passed away by the time I was born. My great grandfather was a lighthouse keeper. That especially intrigued me, and I would pester her with questions about that. Unfortunately, she didn’t know much about it other than the fact he was away from home for long periods of time. Although times were different, it sounded like she had an ideal childhood.
She didn’t tell me everything. She didn’t tell me anything about how she met and married my grandfather, a stern and seemingly distant man who’d immigrated from Norway. I didn’t know about the hard times of the Depression. The only story she told me about my uncles was that one by one they enlisted in the Navy during World War II—except for Uncle Bjorn, who was disqualified because one of his eyes was artificial. How had that happened? I wanted to know. Grandma said he was changing a tire and the jack slipped.
After my grandma passed away, my mother and I stayed in her cottage for a week, packing up her belongings. I found her diary and found a place where I could read it privately. Her diary covered the Depression years, and I discovered a lot of disturbing secrets no one talked about. I learned my grandfather had kept the deafness in his family a secret from Grandma until he began to lose his hearing at a young age and after the births of my aunt and mother.
My aunt was born profoundly deaf, but my mom remembers hearing music when she was very young, 2 or 3. She remembers an old radio in the living room and would dance when music was playing. I knew mom was profoundly deaf as she shared the information and I wondered how she’d lost her hearing. Communication between Mom and my grandparents was very limited as I’ve written before. Mom’s understanding was that she had a bad cold, blew her nose too hard and blew out her eardrums. I don’t think that’s it, but I don’t have anyone else to ask now.
I also learned there was domestic violence. My grandfather beat Grandma and the children, including my mother. When they got old enough, my uncles would intervene to stop him. When I showed the diary to mom after I’d read it, she looked at those entries and signed, “So I was right.” She remembered how grandpa would become so frustrated with her, he’d bang her head against the wall. My aunt had no memory of any of it. She was astounded when mom showed her the diary.
My Uncle John found out there was a diary, asked to borrow it and I never saw it again.
Grandma’s last entry stuck with me. It was written years later, just after grandpa passed away in 1965. All those years, she’d been heartbroken and resentful that he didn’t tell her about the deafness in his family and that it was brought upon her beautiful girls. She was relieved he was gone. She felt free.
I suppose there’s a reason we don’t learn a lot of details about our older relatives until after they’re gone. One reason is that they want to spare us ugly details by only sharing minimal good memories. Another, like my dad, just wants to forget their past.
My dad never wanted to answer questions about his childhood. Once in a blue moon, he’d let a few details slip out. I asked him how he’d lost his hearing. Once again, he couldn’t get the full story from his parents. His explanation was that a surgeon cut his neck and he’d lost his hearing as a result. I wonder if he had a botched mastoidectomy. There’s no way to know for sure. I knew that he and his brother Tommy were very close and went to the movies together. I knew he went to a school for the Deaf and played football, played in the band, and acted. He never would answer questions about growing up during the Depression and World War II. His answer to my questions usually was, “Long ago, forget it.”
The reason I decided to write about talking to older relatives about their past lives is because of an article I read. There is so much valuable information that becomes lost when an older person passes away.
Grandma had done some digging around in our Ancestry and stuffed her notes in her diary. She’d traced one branch of our family, the Rulons, to Ruel Rulon. Ruel was born in France. During the Huguenot period, Protestants were being persecuted. The family had a shipping business, and Ruel’s brothers smuggled him out of France by hiding him in a wine barrel. The ship landed in Barnegat, New Jersey. The Rulon family line included a drummer boy during the Revolutionary War and a soldier during the Civil War. There were names, dates, and places right up to my great-grandfather, Gilbert Rulon. What a find!
It sparked my interest in genealogy and I tried to learn as much information as I could from my parents. My mother willingly filled out a questionnaire for me, but my dad absolutely refused. “Long ago, forget it.” I tried asking his sister, my Aunt Bea, and she was equally evasive. I wanted to know how and why the Scanlon grandparents had left Ireland, and how Grandpa Scanlon had become blind.
Recently, one of my cousins began serious research into the Irish branch of my family, the Scanlon-Meehans. I had reconnected with this cousin thanks to joining Ancestry and taking a DNA test. I have happily reconnected with or connected with several distant cousins on both sides of my family, including my grandfather’s family in Norway.
I thought about how I don’t share a lot of stories with my kids. My hubby knows everything because I do confide in him. I guess I was shielding my kids as much as possible. As they grew older, though, they learned some of the more dysfunctional aspects of their grandparents. After my dad died, we had mom move in with us, but it didn’t last long. Although she’d stopped drinking, my mom still suffered from the same mental illness she’d had all these years, and it was just too difficult.
She lived with my brother next, and it ended up causing a divorce between my brother and his wife Connie. When my mom didn’t like the food prepared for her, she’d pull a tRump and throw the plate against the wall. There were other aggressive behaviors too.
Both my brother and I have PTSD. Mom ended up in an assisted living facility, and my brother made himself available to shop for her or take her to the doctor until she passed away a couple of years ago.
All these years, I’ve been keeping a diary or a journal. One long piece I wrote was about my growing up years. I try not to go into stories about my life when we’re all together, but I figured I would leave a record like my grandmother did.
The point of all this is: if you have a senior relative who isn’t reluctant to share and if you’re curious about your back story, then I recommend you talk with that person. It’s an engaging way to learn about what life was like years ago. It’s a good way to learn about why your family believes the things they do. Learning about where your family originated in the world opens doors to learning about other cultures and history. Most of all, the senior feels like someone cares enough to listen to them.
In the article, the author asked a senior about being willing to talk and her reply was: “Just ask.”
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