As a family historian/genealogist I am cognizant of the fact that I spend part of my writing time telling my own story. I am hoping that someday in the future, my grand or great grandchild will become a genealogist. How wonderful to find an ancestor’s stories in their own words and what a gift to be able to send it into the future. With that thought, today I am going to write one of my stories. It’s not happy, it’s about a secret.
My mother bore and raised me on her own, my father was unknown to me except in a picture. We were very poor, government assistance poor, but I remember being cherished and happy. I had one half-brother; he was 13 years older from my mother’s marriage to his father. I worshipped him, and for all I could tell at that young age, he loved me right back. When I was 5, he went off to college and pretty much only visited on his holidays so wasn’t involved in my day to day much after that. For the next 5 years our mother got progressively sicker until it became literally life or death.
In spite of being convinced to go to the hospital, she died, leaving me a penniless orphan. From the time she died until I escaped after my high school graduation, my stepparents made my life a living hell. I do not say that lightly. Their abuse eventually disabled me, and I deal with both the physical and mental repercussions every day.
However, none of that is relevant other than as background. The choice of my legal guardians after my mother died had a dramatic impact on my life. As my mother’s closest relative, my maternal grandmother made the choice and placed me with my mother’s stepsister and her husband. At the time she told me that my mother had wanted it that way. I have believed that story all my life.
Towards the end of the pandemic, I got a letter from my cousin in Iowa. We had only just reconnected about a year before and I was so excited to see something in the mail from her. Opening the envelope, I found another envelope and a short note from her indicating that she had found the envelope in her father’s things from our grandmother and that she thought I should have it.
The letter was addressed to my grandmother, and had been postmarked in 1973, the year my mother died. Fear filled my stomach, but I had to know what was in the envelope. It was closed but not sealed anymore indicating that it had been received and read.
The letter inside was a notarized copy of my mother’s written instructions for me should she die. In the event of her death, she was completely clear that I should go to my brother.
That letter rocked my world 50 years after its writing. It revealed a secret that my grandmother lived with and took to her grave. Did my brother know? Was he given a choice? Did he too take it to the grave?
Unfortunately, the whys of our ancestors’ stories have to be guessed most of the time, and this is no different. Personal motivations and convictions rarely survive a person’s life, leaving it up to us to tell the stories in the best way that we can. I have theories about what happened for my grandmother, and perhaps I’ll write about those in the future but for now, it’s enough to have told this part of my own story.
Oh, Saphyre, I'm so very sorry that happened to you. From all of that you've found an incredible gift for storytelling and your own voice as a writer. I'm honored to have met you in all of this and to be part of the community where you're sharing your stories. My family harbored painful secrets as well, it's one of the reasons why I've felt so strongly about creating safe spaces where these stories can be told, where the truth can unfold.
Courage. Thank you 🥺
Thanks for trusting us with your story and I hope you find some peace in the finding and the telling.