Family History

Remembering the Questions

The last survivor of the Titanic died recently. She was 97, only an infant on that tragic night.

My grandmother was born in 1900, so she would have been 12 when the Titanic went down. I wish I'd thought to ask her about it while she was alive.

I think like that a lot now. I'll read about how the Spanish Influenza pandemic  killed almost 700,000 Americans in 1918-1919, and I wonder what that was like for my grandmother. Surely she must have known people that got ill or died.

Don't get me wrong. I was very close to my grandmother. She lived to be 94 and I had many revealing conversations with her from the time I was young. My mother, for instance, was unaware that my grandmother had been engaged three times until I told her. She didn't realize there had been three additional siblings of my grandmother's that had died in infancy.

Like many parents, my grandmother was busy with her four children. Her husband died when they were still very young, and she had to go out in 1946 and work full time to support them. No doubt she didn't have much time for sharing old stories. But that had changed by the time she became a grandmother.

She told me stories about my mother, like the time she mistakenly made dates with two different boys for the same night, and they both showed up. She told me how she tightly bound her breasts to flatten them for the flapper styles of the 20's, and how she believed doing so had forever destroyed their shape.

But I was young. Not yet a mother myself, and still caught up in thinking she'd always be there. Now I wonder, what was it like to raise four children in the 40's and 50's alone? Did she date? How was it to live through World Wars I and II? To be 20 years old and the first generation of young women to get the vote?

I encourage my kids to question their grandparents about their lives whenever they see them. But ironically, it often seems we're unaware of what big questions we might have until it's too late to find out the answers.

What was it like to be a 12 year old girl in 1912 and hear about the sinking of that famous ship?

If only I'd thought to ask.

Comments

[Sprite's Keeper]

My great grandfather left Communist Russia around the end of World War 1, when things were starting to get very heated and Germany trying to raise their own issues. When he left, he promised he would never speak of it again. So, we have an entire family and history somewhere in Russia that was completely left behind. I sometimes think about what he could have possibly gone through and how interesting it would be to know that side of him, but all I remember is a thick accented old man who loved the hell out of me.

[LPC]

I was just thinking this morning that advice I'd give to 20-year olds is to immediately ask everyone old in their family to tell them all the cool family stories. By the time you reach 50 and you care about it it's too late.

[Joanie M]

I remember asking my mother how she met my father and started dating him. Her response was "I always knew your father." I didn't get it. He graduated high school in 1940, my mom in 1942. They went to different high schools. Dad was in the Navy for the duration of WW II, and married Mom in Sept 1945 (remember, the war ended in June 1945). While he was overseas, my mom moved from the coal regions of PA to Philadelphia after high school to get work. Unless they were dating while Mom was in school and before Dad joined the Navy, I have no idea when they had time to meet! And it's something I'll never know.

[Michele]

It was thoughts like these that got me into genealogy, history, and librarianship. Now, I'm the keeper of the family history; mine and my husbands. It's great.

[Casey]

Great post. My grandmother shared a lot of her stories with me (she died in 99 and lived to be 86). Her mom died from influenza when my grandmother was around five, leaving six kids behind. I can't even imagine...

[Darryle]

For someone who was a reporter in my working life, I asked a remarkably small amount of questions about my own family history, and it's something I deeply regret. One of the reasons I have a blog is so someday my kids can fill in the answers to questions they never thought of asking.