Charlie tells us of a mother who disappeared.....
My brother, sister and I had a mother. But never a grandmother. We were somewhat envious of those of our friends who did as they had an extra person to remember their birthdays.
Our father’s mother died young in 1918 whilst he was in the Army . Our mother’s mother died even earlier when my mother who had been born in 1899 was three or four. She was sent off from her home in 10 Court 5, Great Colmore Street to be brought up by her grandmother, her dad’s mother, who lived in leafy Knowle. (She's below, a year or two later). The circumstances of her own mother’s passing were never known to us but the death seemed to have occurred at around the time of the birth of a younger sister in 1902 and so I always put it down as being due to childbirth. (Other siblings were a brother, b. 1894 who died aged two in 1896 from pneumonia and a sister b. 1901 who died, again aged two, from "Shock following Head Injuries" after being run over by a cart. Those were indeed the days).
And so the three of us grew up grandmotherless. My mother died in 1995 at the age of 96, the circumstances of her earliest days not appearing to have caused too much damage. At around that time my brother had taken up genealogical research as a hobby. It wasn’t long before he found our grandmother’s death certificate and was more than mildly surprised to note that it was dated 1945.
The questions then arose. Did my mother know this all along? Did she swallow a story fed to her by her grandmother and believe it all her life? Or did she persist, for one reason or another, with a story she knew to be untrue? And if so, why? It took a year or two to find out. But then one day I pitched up on the door step of a lovely lady who was the daughter of the younger sister. I was told that her/my grandmother had lived with that family throughout. Did my mother know? Oh yes, of course she did, she used to come and visit a couple of times a year throughout the 1930s – and here is a Christmas present she brought one year. I looked at a 1930s salad bowl, shaped like a large lettuce leaf and still in use.
But as for why…. I suppose marital break-up was such a dreadful thing to occur at that time, particularly if the wife was regarded as being at fault, so that the person concerned became a non-person. But the tragedy of the break-up following the loss of those infants (neither party ever remarried), the way a secret like that can be kept for a lifetime, and what feelings and unhappiness lie behind the maintaining of such a pretence, even with one’s own children, by such a good person, I still find impossible to comprehend and infinitely sad.
Chris
My brother, sister and I had a mother. But never a grandmother. We were somewhat envious of those of our friends who did as they had an extra person to remember their birthdays.
Our father’s mother died young in 1918 whilst he was in the Army . Our mother’s mother died even earlier when my mother who had been born in 1899 was three or four. She was sent off from her home in 10 Court 5, Great Colmore Street to be brought up by her grandmother, her dad’s mother, who lived in leafy Knowle. (She's below, a year or two later). The circumstances of her own mother’s passing were never known to us but the death seemed to have occurred at around the time of the birth of a younger sister in 1902 and so I always put it down as being due to childbirth. (Other siblings were a brother, b. 1894 who died aged two in 1896 from pneumonia and a sister b. 1901 who died, again aged two, from "Shock following Head Injuries" after being run over by a cart. Those were indeed the days).
And so the three of us grew up grandmotherless. My mother died in 1995 at the age of 96, the circumstances of her earliest days not appearing to have caused too much damage. At around that time my brother had taken up genealogical research as a hobby. It wasn’t long before he found our grandmother’s death certificate and was more than mildly surprised to note that it was dated 1945.
The questions then arose. Did my mother know this all along? Did she swallow a story fed to her by her grandmother and believe it all her life? Or did she persist, for one reason or another, with a story she knew to be untrue? And if so, why? It took a year or two to find out. But then one day I pitched up on the door step of a lovely lady who was the daughter of the younger sister. I was told that her/my grandmother had lived with that family throughout. Did my mother know? Oh yes, of course she did, she used to come and visit a couple of times a year throughout the 1930s – and here is a Christmas present she brought one year. I looked at a 1930s salad bowl, shaped like a large lettuce leaf and still in use.
But as for why…. I suppose marital break-up was such a dreadful thing to occur at that time, particularly if the wife was regarded as being at fault, so that the person concerned became a non-person. But the tragedy of the break-up following the loss of those infants (neither party ever remarried), the way a secret like that can be kept for a lifetime, and what feelings and unhappiness lie behind the maintaining of such a pretence, even with one’s own children, by such a good person, I still find impossible to comprehend and infinitely sad.
Chris
