Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
New profile posts
Latest activity
Internet Search
Members
Current visitors
New profile posts
Search profile posts
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Forums
General Discussions
The Watercooler
Family Memory Reminder
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 412067" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>We've been finding interesting skeletons in the family closet, secrets my mother would never have shared, that she was determined to take to the grave. But sometimes evidence will out, and she spilled enough over the years for us to begin to put pieces of the puzzle together. Not in things she said specifically, but in her attitudes to things. Also, some evidence was there in plain sight but we were led up a different garden path.</p><p></p><p>I tried to record family members but often they would refuse to talk into a tape recorder. My mother's aunt was a wonderful person, had lived through a great deal. She never married because she was the youngest who stayed home to care for her elderly parents and blind sister. They both worked tirelessly for the church. But although aunty loved all of us, she had a special place for my uncle. My mother said it was a bit too much sometimes, and even when he was younger, he was always over the road visiting them and not home with his parents. He would come home on leave from the war and could be back for a day before his parents knew - he was visiting his aunty. Now, years after they have all died, we have put together pieces and realised - my grandmother was unable to have more than the two children she had. Both girls. She had miscarriage after miscarriage, each one worse than the last. Finally she was told it was "haemolytic disease of the newborn" and some years later it was identified as due to her being Rh negative. My mother, the eldest, was Rh positive. She had told us that her much younger brother was actually adopted, because her mother couldn't have any more children. A woman living in the same street was pregnant while her husband was away during the war (I heard several versions of this story) and her parents took the baby in and raised it as their own, all very unofficial because back then, adoptions were all clearly marked with a big red stamp "adopted" on the birth certificate. And my uncle never knew he was adopted. And they were able to keep it secret from him, my mother said. He must never know, he had even said one day, "If I were adopted, I wouldn't want to know."</p><p>My mother would have been icily cold to anyone who had an affair with her father. She would also have been angry with her father. But she adored him, adored both her parents. Also adored her aunts. Was especially close to the youngest. Looking at all the clues - I believe uncle was the result of a surrogacy arrangement between sisters. Natural conception (which would have been challenging for my aunt especially). Before she died my mother said to someone, "He was his father's son." The secrecy would have been to protect the reputations of those involved - people would have made it into something sordid and I know these people involved would have felt the wonderful gift besmirched by public scandal and innuendo.</p><p></p><p>Taping people is valuable. I wish I could have taped my aunt. She wrote a lot of her story down, and in her later years appeared on television, became a minor celebrity purely because she had lived so long. We have the tapes from TV shows, but they didn't show her in her best light - the interviewers were rushing her too much.</p><p></p><p>We taped our trip to Europe, which of course meant that when father in law was telling us all about his memories of the place as a POW on the run, we were there with tape running. Now he's been dead for 15 years, hearing his voice can be eerie. But wonderful. husband put the tapes onto the computer (something I recommend you do with all video and audio) and we shared copies around.</p><p></p><p>When difficult child 3 was interviewed last year for a TV current affairs program, they wanted early video of him. We gave them our family archived video tapes for them to extract some precious memories, but when the show came but they hadn't used the best. They sent us the tapes and their digitised copes (as well as complete copies of every bit of footage they filmed of us) and we found out why - our previous video files had degraded and were unreachable, even by the best technicians the TV network had. Very sad.</p><p></p><p>So record your memories, but also keep those files current and in good condition. Information degrades.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 412067, member: 1991"] We've been finding interesting skeletons in the family closet, secrets my mother would never have shared, that she was determined to take to the grave. But sometimes evidence will out, and she spilled enough over the years for us to begin to put pieces of the puzzle together. Not in things she said specifically, but in her attitudes to things. Also, some evidence was there in plain sight but we were led up a different garden path. I tried to record family members but often they would refuse to talk into a tape recorder. My mother's aunt was a wonderful person, had lived through a great deal. She never married because she was the youngest who stayed home to care for her elderly parents and blind sister. They both worked tirelessly for the church. But although aunty loved all of us, she had a special place for my uncle. My mother said it was a bit too much sometimes, and even when he was younger, he was always over the road visiting them and not home with his parents. He would come home on leave from the war and could be back for a day before his parents knew - he was visiting his aunty. Now, years after they have all died, we have put together pieces and realised - my grandmother was unable to have more than the two children she had. Both girls. She had miscarriage after miscarriage, each one worse than the last. Finally she was told it was "haemolytic disease of the newborn" and some years later it was identified as due to her being Rh negative. My mother, the eldest, was Rh positive. She had told us that her much younger brother was actually adopted, because her mother couldn't have any more children. A woman living in the same street was pregnant while her husband was away during the war (I heard several versions of this story) and her parents took the baby in and raised it as their own, all very unofficial because back then, adoptions were all clearly marked with a big red stamp "adopted" on the birth certificate. And my uncle never knew he was adopted. And they were able to keep it secret from him, my mother said. He must never know, he had even said one day, "If I were adopted, I wouldn't want to know." My mother would have been icily cold to anyone who had an affair with her father. She would also have been angry with her father. But she adored him, adored both her parents. Also adored her aunts. Was especially close to the youngest. Looking at all the clues - I believe uncle was the result of a surrogacy arrangement between sisters. Natural conception (which would have been challenging for my aunt especially). Before she died my mother said to someone, "He was his father's son." The secrecy would have been to protect the reputations of those involved - people would have made it into something sordid and I know these people involved would have felt the wonderful gift besmirched by public scandal and innuendo. Taping people is valuable. I wish I could have taped my aunt. She wrote a lot of her story down, and in her later years appeared on television, became a minor celebrity purely because she had lived so long. We have the tapes from TV shows, but they didn't show her in her best light - the interviewers were rushing her too much. We taped our trip to Europe, which of course meant that when father in law was telling us all about his memories of the place as a POW on the run, we were there with tape running. Now he's been dead for 15 years, hearing his voice can be eerie. But wonderful. husband put the tapes onto the computer (something I recommend you do with all video and audio) and we shared copies around. When difficult child 3 was interviewed last year for a TV current affairs program, they wanted early video of him. We gave them our family archived video tapes for them to extract some precious memories, but when the show came but they hadn't used the best. They sent us the tapes and their digitised copes (as well as complete copies of every bit of footage they filmed of us) and we found out why - our previous video files had degraded and were unreachable, even by the best technicians the TV network had. Very sad. So record your memories, but also keep those files current and in good condition. Information degrades. Marg [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Forums
General Discussions
The Watercooler
Family Memory Reminder
Top