Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Funerals are for the Families
We buried my uncle at Arlington National Cemetary yesterday with full military honors. He was a veteran of both World War II and Korea. He was a pilot; he built several airplanes; he tried out for the U.S. Olympic fencing team; he was a hypnotist; he was a chiropractor; he was a member of the Confederate Air Force; he held several patents and thought of a lot more inventions that he never got around to patenting. He was a very intelligent, very creative and very charming man. But his legacy was pain and destruction.
Two families, five kids, all of them completely abandoned -- no child support, no phone calls, no birthday cards. We spent the last two days swapping stories, sharing tears and some laughter. As we all weighed in with our memories, some things became more clear. We think we figured out some truths that my uncle tried to hide.
Two families, five kids, all of them completely abandoned -- no child support, no phone calls, no birthday cards. We spent the last two days swapping stories, sharing tears and some laughter. As we all weighed in with our memories, some things became more clear. We think we figured out some truths that my uncle tried to hide.
His only daughter was the only child who ever knew her father at all. Although he was gone a lot with the Navy, he did come home occasionally until she was 10, when he left for good. It hurt to watch all the emotions warring within her: pride in his service, sorrow at his death, anger and hurt at the way she was treated, yearning still for what should have been. I know that most of us have some baggage from our childhood, but it seems to me that my cousins got far more than their share.
But here's the part that just fascinated me. It's seemed for a long time that my brother and I must have been raised in parallel universes because we are as different as two people can be. But it turns out that our childhood memories are different, too. Some of that came from different experiences -- for example, he was the only one our grandmother liked, so he did not see her as the mean, selfish woman the rest of us knew -- but it turns out that family members alter the narrative to suit the audience. Something my mother had always told me about my grandfather came as a complete shock to my brother; so much so that he called my mother and asked about it. And she admitted it ... sort of ... in a vague way ... with qualifications ... "well, yes, but ... " I had witnessed, but at age 16 really didn't know how to stop, abominable treatment of one cousin by my grandmother, but he changed the details of the story when he told it to the others so that it was just a pleasant encounter. In fact, I was amazed later in the evening when he admitted to me that his memories of the incident matched mine.
I think I've figured out two things: I don't trust much of what I hear, and always check the facts as best I can. And I overwhelm people with detail when our memories differ -- "you were wearing your Spiderman shirt and we had just rolled down the hill on that big barrel" -- mostly, I realize now, to reassure myself that what I remember is what really happened.
What about your family? Are the stories always the same, or do they change depending on the audience?
3 Comments:
Family certainly is interesting , isn't it? Mine has been fractured into non-eistence, so I don't tradde memories with anyone. My family is my husband and kids. Life is simpler that way.
I have done this myself.
I would never let my son
know what a mean women my mother
was.
She hated me and my father
and never let me forget it.
She adored my son and showered
him with love and gifts.
Better to let sleeping dogs lie,
and truth in some cases serve
no one.
After all it is all written on
the wind,
and 10,000 years from now
who will care.
But that is just me.
kay lee
First, I am sorry about your uncle, a loss is still a loss, and each person has good and bad qualities.
As for memories, I think every one has a different perspective, what can be awful for one person, another may not remember at all, or it may not seem as awful to them.
Sometimes, my sister and I share memories, basically, we do remember a lot of the same things, but there are things I remember that she doesn't, and visa versa. Sometimes, she will mention something and I will get a weird visual in my mind of the event, but I don't remember details, but then she is older than me, so things from when I was very small, she has a better memory of.
I have an aunt though, who always insists that things happened just as she remembers them, or worse, not at all, and she will call you a liar when you try and tell her that you remember something differently, or something she doesn't remember. I don't say much to her anymore when it comes to the past.
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