Slipping through a door into the past

"In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage - to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness." -- Alex Haley, Roots

In 1977, fourteen year old Wendy, like many people all over the world, became entranced by the mini-series Roots.

Immediately thereafter I bought a family tree workbook

and set to work interviewing my two sole remaining grandparents: my father's father and my mother's mother.

I am glad I did.  Not only did I hear some stories and learn bits and pieces about whom I was descended from, I got to spend some valuable time with my grandparents.

My grandfather wrote out copious notes for me:

and was so pleased that I cared enough to ask him about his parents and grandparents.  He was born in 1900, so the people he was talking about were long gone.  He's been gone since 1980, but his stories are in my mind, and he is in my office, keeping watch, ever helpful.

My mother's mother shared stories of how she met my grandfather and life in New Zealand where she was born.

Lately, I have been looking at this information again.  I am working on another book, and some of the characters will be loosely based on long-dead relatives on my dad's side.

As part of my research, I was working on Ancestry.ca, which I love, and I came across the name of a family member whom I didn't even know still lived in the province.  He was on my dad's mother's side, a part of my family history that I didn't know very well.

But my 91 year old cousin does.  And he is still engaged and interested in the world around him, this cousin of my dad's, grandson of my great-grandparents.

I'd never met him.  So I cold-called him.  And we chatted and chatted and yesterday, Barry and I spent the afternoon with him.

I walked into his apartment and I felt like I was walking into the home of a long-lost friend.  We were cousins.  My grandmother was his aunt.  We knew each other.  

We were of the same people.  We were family.

Out of the mists of time I was hearing stories of my great-grandparents, of my grandparents.  

I discovered things I'd never known, including the fact that my Great-Grandfather had been the Mayor of the town at one time.

 

My great-grandfather's boot and shoe company

I learned about my cousin's war service and stories of his experiences as a 20 year old boy in England during the war. 

I got glimpses of personality, flashes of family stories, some oft-told, others only recalled in the moment yesterday when I asked a question.

We talked and talked and talked and god willing, we will talk again in July when Barry and I go visit him at his cottage.

He made names on birth, marriage and death certificates come to life for me. 

It was a mystical, magical afternoon, and when we got into the car at the end of the afternoon, I could feel the tears well up in my eyes at the gift that had just been given to me.

How many of us would have give anything to step back into time for even a brief moment to walk beside our great-grandparents, grandparents or parents when they were young?  To know their favourite food, who they kissed first, what they loved to read and learn about, what scared them or gave them joy?  We do not ask enough questions and then the person is gone, taking the real treasures of this earth with them.

There is a new field of genetic research, behavioral epigenetics, that is indicating startling evidence that the behaviours and experiences of our ancestors are imprinted at the molecular level of our DNA, including traumatic experiences.  You can read more about this here.  

My father's mother died when I was only three years old - I hardly remember her - but my cousin told me about a personality that was remarkably similar to mine and similar to the personality of my other grandmother, which explains a lot about me.

  

Is my love of gardening imprinted from her love of gardening?  

Is my silly giggle my own or has it been heard before in a parlour a hundred years past?  

Do I hate eggs because someone else hated eggs?  

Am I nostalgic because someone else was a hopeless (or hopeful) nostalgic?

On the night I was born, my mother ate a piece of chocolate cake with boiled frosting, which is one of the things I will eat if I ever have to choose a last supper.

“We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.” —Shirley Abbott

It doesn't matter really, though it is interesting to think that my desire to own shoes might be less about a compulsion for consumption than about the fact that my great-grandfather made shoes for a living.

Tangential to say the least, but fascinating nonetheless.  So today's clarion call is this: if you have an elderly relative, make them talk!  Write it down, tape the conversation, do whatever it takes to preserve the moment.  Do not wait and do not be shy.

When we hugged goodbye (we had moved from handshake to being family in three hours) my cousin said that I reminded him so much of my father's sister that is was remarkable. 

But of course, the woman he was remembering was a women in the 1950's.  It was high praise indeed, as my aunt was one of the loves of my life.

Our families are uniquely our own.  To tell the stories of our family, to know their stories, is to keep them alive.

“We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors’ wisdom.” —Maya Angelou

me and my long-lost cousin, reunited - isn't he handsome?

The stories are there, we need but scoop them up and bring them back to life...

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:And this same flower that smiles today
To-morrow will be dying. (Herrick)

After we left we drove by the house where my grandmother lived and where my father lived during the war.  We drove through the graveyard and I am sure I caught a glimpse of my grandmother standing by her parent's grave.

But it might have been the tears in my eyes.