Elders
When the last of the elders is gone, then we become the elders.
That line was uttered on an episode of The Sopranos a few seasons back and has always stuck in my head.
This weekend I learned that my uncle Maurice, my father’s sole surviving sibling, passed away down in Texas. He died four months to the day after my father. There are no more living members from that branch of the family tree.
I did not know my uncle very well. My dad had a somewhat strained relationship with his family. When he left Dallas, first to go to college and later to serve during World War II, he never really looked back. I met my paternal grandparents and his brothers and sister when I was very young, but have little recollection of those meetings and had only minimal contact as I grew up. If you believe in a hereafter, then the entire family has been joined together again, somewhere.
In contrast, I have always known members of my mother’s family, even distant cousins, and can with a little help even draw the family tree of my maternal grandfather’s family.
Despite not having a close connection to dad’s kin, there is now a strange sense of loss in knowing that an entire segment of my ancestry no longer walks the earth. My brothers and I, and the nephews and niece of two of them, are now the only direct descendents who carry the family name. There are cousins descended from grand uncles and aunts I never met, living somewhere, but I have no relationship with them. This latest passing closes a door that never really opened and I find myself reacting to the fact that I don’t know where I came from, paternally-speaking, and now may never know.
I know this same feeling and I don't know how to get through it or relate to it or resolve it.
Posted by: Troy at April 10, 2006 11:44 AMI've been having the same thoughts lately myself. After my aunt died a few weeks ago I started working on putting a family tree together so we could keep track of our history but there's so many missing branches that only my grandmother would have knowledge of. She made sure no one knew her parents, uncles, aunts and cousins. She left the south west and never looked back. I have extended family in Texas and Oklahoma that I'll never know because my grandmother passsed away without sharing the knowledge. It saddens me.
Sorry to hear about your situation.
Posted by: Shawn at April 10, 2006 6:16 PMI don't know if people of our parents and grandparents generation realized how important this family information is to US. They may have had perfectly valid reasons for breaking connections to certain family or even protecting their children from perceived shame and embarrassment, but in the end that means missing information about who we are and how we got here. It means in trying to go back and trace the stories of our lives, we can only go but so far.
Posted by: Bernie at April 10, 2006 7:49 PMMy grandmother was definitely my favorite elder ever because she has taught me so many things about life while I was growing up and it helped me a lot with the things I am handling as an adult.
Posted by: Waddie G. at April 10, 2006 9:05 PM