Relationships With Our Parents, Grandparents, Ancestors and Descendants Until the Day We Die, Or Long After?
My father died in 1988 but I still have a relationship with him. As I recently wrote a friend: “I spent a lot of my life from age 10 until the time of my father's death when I was 34 focusing on the ways I was NOT like him. Making my peace with him requires acknowledging the ways I WAS or AM like him, what he gave or bequeathed to me, both good and bad.”
I certainly did not write the definitive piece on my father in these 1,000 words. It suggests that he was less than I wanted him to be as a father, but this lack inspired me to try to be more to my sons than my father was to me. It also inspired me to seek out other men who played a kind of father or mentor role.
My mother died in 2006 and I still have a relationship with her.
Is this odd or unusual? I suspect not. Consciously or unconsciously, the presence or absence of those closest to us still influences us.
My relationships with them change as I reach the ages they attained, comparing myself to them at that age. If I don’t live as long as they did, a part of me will feel cheated…If I live longer than they did, I may consider every extra day a blessing or frequently recognize “it didn’t have to be. I could have died at their age.” How do I handle aging and potential health challenges — better or worse than they did?
I didn’t know either one of my grandfathers or my paternal grandmothers except by stories. At least I have stories. They continue to live through the stories.
My maternal grandmother died in 1982. Now as a grandfather myself, I think about my relationship with her, a link to someone born in the 19th century, and wonder if my grandson (and future descendants?) will view me as quaintly as I view her. “Gosh, he was born way back in the middle of the 20th century,” my descendants might shrug in the way I shrug about my grandfather (whom I never knew) born way back in 1864.
Grandparents, even parents, siblings, other relatives, and friends can remain present in one’s life by their absence or lack of influence. Or in the ways we imagine they might have influenced us. That can be a blessing or a curse.
“Thank God they let me go. Thank God they weren’t more of an influence on me” might be as strong an expression of gratitude as the gratitude for the time we had with them, or the longing for additional connections might not be as great as the relief that the connections were not stronger.
We may have a relationship with their absence, because we have no subconscious model as to how to act or not to act at that age, except maybe not to act like them.
I think about my parents’ relationships with their five children and six grandchildren and my relationship with my (so far) one grandchild. Already my parents have accomplished more in that realm than me since I only had two children.
I compare myself to them, both positively and negatively. An adult child doesn’t always want to win or always lose in comparison to parents. We want them to win some comparisons to us, and we want to win some comparisons to them.
Does all this suggest I am insufficiently individuated from my parents?
My niece read to my mother, a writer, on her death bed an essay she had written 30 years earlier called “When Your Mother Becomes Your Child.” My mother’s response? “That’s the same thing that is happening right now.”
I take an interest in ancestry because it is our direct connection to the past. We are all shaped by history whether we recognize it or not. Connecting with or acknowledging ancestors is a way of accepting that we are shaped by history — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Related:
Cleopatra’s nose, Helen’s face, Henry the VIII’s libido, Richard III’s horse, and your ancestors’ luck or misfortune made crucial historical differences.
From Amazon.com: An Excerpt from When Descendants Become Ancestors
Your column relates to some cemetery investigation of my GG grandmother I did. I found a stone next to her two daughters— one of whom is my G grandmother, who was alive the first three years of my life. My discovery—GG’s cemetery stone does not have her name— Just her dates of birth/death. She was an “unwed” mother in the early 1800s with two illegitimate daughters (“bastard” daughters according to Ancestry) born more than a decade apart. I know I inherited her independent life and I’m sure she messaged me—her feminist GG granddaughter—to give her the love and recognition she has long deserved. Her name—Fanny Mapes— is on her piece of family granite today.