It's a good year and a half into this family history research, yet there is something that is still bothering me somewhat - my grandmother Lorna remains a bit of a mystery to me.
I mean, I now know why she had an olive complexion - it came from her Burgher heritage. But I don't know what she herself knew of this heritage, if she knew anything at all. I know why it was that she also seemed to have some sort of financial independence - she inherited this from her mother and her grandparents. But I also find it odd that she always told me she was an only child when she wasn't - she had a half-brother and I never met him. I also haven't met his family, and I have no idea why such an estrangement happened between these two siblings. Perhaps it was a jealousy on nanna's behalf that her father went on to make another family following her parents' divorce. Either way, if Ray's descendants ever read this, I would love to meet you. I just haven't known where to start.
I know nanna was brought up mainly by her nanna, and her nanna was, in turn, brought up by her grandmother. But I cannot find any stories about this, and while I remember my nanna having a particular fondness for me, I don't really recall her as a nurturer.
I've thought maybe nanna rebelled against her parents by having a steady husband who was also her co-conspirator, as well as having four children. But apart from endless proof that my grandparents did love each other very much, I cannot find any evidence nanna was happy as a housewife. The opposite seems true, actually. Nanna was deeply restless, she did not stay home during the day keeping house, and preferred instead to head to the pubs for a few drinks and some socialising. Indeed, I feel pretty cruel about this nowadays but as kids, I, and all her other grandkids, used to make fun of nanna's drinking problem because we didn't know better. Both nanna's parents liked their "good times", but nanna seemed to always have a drinking problem and this problem went into destructive depths when my grandfather died. It did not help her deterioration in later life.
There are other mysteries though. I have previously mentioned her cousin, Edna Ogden, before, and how my mother, uncles and aunty were unaware that this woman was actually nanna's cousin. It turns out this has been a running theme. I have unearthed a variety of nanna's cousins, mentioned them to my maternal generational elders, and they consistently remember these people while being unaware that they were actually relations.
I wonder if this was due to estrangement. Certainly a trait I loathe in my family that I have witnessed (and been the victim of) many times is the tendency to just cut people off without explanation. Sometimes I still cry about the times this has happened to me. Treating others as if they are disposable is a pattern, and one that I find both devastating and cowardly, yet it has apparently been happening for generations. Why? And can it stop?
I ask the last bit because looking into this trend has probably given me some answers as to why I have had to rebuild so much knowledge when looking into nanna's ancestry. As her ancestry grew more and more fascinating, it highlighted to me how many stories our family had lost. I had to wonder if relationships had been better nurtured in previous generations whether these stories would have stayed alive. And to be honest, I think they would have. So how do we change this for the next generations when people still seem pretty keen on this estrangement pattern?
Anyway, I am going to leave that there. I hope one day I do understand Lorna more, and everyone else while I am at it.
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