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yuuagoMy mother recently sent me some scans of newspaper clippings. Obituaries. My great grandfather. The one from Scotland. She says her cousin has the records. Why didn't she tell me this before?
But I feel such anger and frustration. It's not the right side of the family, not the ones I'm looking for. I never knew him, I never knew his wife, I never knew his son, only his son's wife, my grandmother. These people are so little to me, they're nearly nothing, hardly like family at all.
I feel sick in my gut because somehow I resent this man, this Robert from Scotland, because some trace of him has been left behind. Records and photos of him and information on the other Roberts, his son and his son and generations of Roberts all down to my brother, because that's how it is, every generation has to have a Robert.
Where are my great grandmother's records. Where are my other great grandfather's records? Where are the records from Italy? From Ukraine? If that is indeed where she was from. It seems like the story changes every time I ask.
Why is it that nobody showed me where Luigi's grave was? Why is it that they let me wander in that cemetery every summer, never finding it? Why did they never tell me where my great grandfather's grave was?
And now I remember my mother sitting at the kitchen counter with a garbage bag full of paper at her feet. She was throwing away my grandmother's letters. My great grandmother's letters. And Christmas cards that they had kept for years. I remember wanting to take it and hide it in my room but I couldn't do it because she was right there and then when she was finished she tied it up and put it in the garage and the next day the garbage men took that garbage bag full of letters away.
Why didn't I ask when she was alive, when my grandmother was alive, or when my great grandmother was alive, why didn't I -- Yes, yes, that's it. Because I was the good son. The son who did as he was told. The son who sat still and kept quiet because he knew that children are meant to be seen and not heard, and that you are a child even if you are seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-three, so don't ask questions, don't speak unless you're spoken to, because it's rude, don't bother people.
Now I only have a name and a surname for my great grandfather and a first name for my great grandmother but not the surname nor the first-name spelling and I have the location, Zoppola, in Pordenone. Nothing else. It was mentioned when my grandmother died. Casually. As if everyone knew it, as if everyone was privy to that information. No. Only the people who knew it already were to be listening, only the people who were included in that should have been listening, should have heard it, should have heard "Some day we should go to Zoppola. That's where she was from, wasn't she?" Children should not listen to the conversations of adults.
She. She. Not he, not Luigi, but she, my great grandmother, the story always changing. Was she Italian was she Polish was she Ukrainian I don't know, it keeps changing, nobody will give me a straight answer.
All I can see now is the pysanka that she had kept as a decoration in her house forever, the one I had always seen and coveted, black with red flowers I think, and after she died and we were cleaning her house my mother gave it to me and said "you can have this" and I held it too tightly and I broke it because I didn't know, I didn't realize, I didn't know it was a real egg, I thought it was made out of wood, I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know.
And now I have records and they aren't for the right people and I feel so angry at my parents for not telling me anything and so sick with myself for resenting that Robert from Scotland who I never knew because he died before I had any chance of knowing him or his son, angry at him because he left behind records that have been neither hidden nor lost.
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2009-09-04 02:13 am (UTC)I'll figure something out eventually.
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Date: 2009-09-04 01:55 am (UTC)It's a very complicated situation but I hope I'll be able to resolve it eventually.
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Date: 2009-09-03 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 03:17 am (UTC)The really frustrating thing is that there are people who know things. There are people who could just tell me what I want to know, but they won't. And up until recently, the relatives I wanted to know about were alive. I could have asked them myself, but I didn't, because you aren't supposed to ask things... argh. So very frustrating.
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Date: 2009-09-03 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 02:56 pm (UTC)And it's a bit weird learning that her village is 23 minutes away (http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Zoppola+to+Codroipo&sll=45.907211,12.626724&sspn=0.31008,0.617294&ie=UTF8&ll=45.96714,12.907562&spn=0.154873,0.308647&z=12) from my grandfather's...
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Date: 2009-09-04 01:49 am (UTC)That's a strange coincidence. Wow.
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Date: 2009-09-04 02:02 pm (UTC)My mom's first language is Italian, but as a child she would greet her aunts on my grandfather's side with "bussade" and "bussâ". She only learned recently these meant "kiss" in Friulian (kiss being "bacio" in Italian).
C-cuttlefish. &hearts
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Date: 2009-09-04 05:50 pm (UTC)Cuttlefish are adorable. Squid too. Eeeee tenteacle-y things~
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Date: 2009-09-03 04:22 pm (UTC)*hug* Nobody deserves to be treated like that.
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Date: 2009-09-04 01:40 am (UTC)I'm feeling better now.
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Date: 2009-09-04 02:40 am (UTC)(also, bachelor button icon! One of my favorite flowers. :D)
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Date: 2009-09-03 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 01:43 am (UTC)