ROOTS AND BRANCHES

Still climbing around in the fambly tree and last
night the realization hit me that my mom's parents
most like married in the first place because Nannie..
Grandmom Aggie...was pregnant with my Uncle Ed. They
married in October of 1924 and Eddie was born six
months later in April of 1925.

So perhaps the later breakup should not be so much
a mystery to this generation, but in those days,in
the 1920's Irish Catholic Boston, it must have been
a tough row for Aggie and her kids to hoe.The family
scandal, perhaps?

I was also struck by the fact that in two weeks I'll
be the same age as Nannie was when she died:56. She
was young but her health had been poor due to her
rheumatic heart and living through the divorce, the
Depression and then World War 2. Her ex-husband,
Edward (the bastard) would have been the same age as
she, and Mom had never mentioned hearing if he'd
passed away all those years since. I wonder if he
ever tried to see her or Uncle Ed as they grew up
and got married.Did he worry about his son serving
in the Navy during the War? Did he know anything
about his seven grandchildren and did he ever see
us when we weren't aware of it?

Was he, as I used to think, the person who'd call us on the phone and then never answered when we asked
who was there?

Did he live long enough to learn he had great grandchildren?

How sad if he didn't know any of this.

How much even sadder if he did, and either just
never cared to contact any of us, or was just
to afraid to try.

I know that even though Mom never talked about it
much except for a few bitter sentences now and again, she was terribly hurt by all of it. I wish
I'd been a bit more insistent on discussing it with her when she was alive now, if only because it
might have forced some sort of contact with her
father, even if it was for just some sort of
final confirmation of what they thought of each other.

And now of course, they're all gone: my grandparents, my parents, and Uncle Eddie as well. Aunt Emily
told Cheryl last week that Eddie would never talk
about his father with her either so she has no
information that could help.

I hope I can find out once and for all if there's
another group of relatives out there and see if they have any more pieces to this story.