85. Who Are We... Part II
Sobbing without tears, aching without pain, suffering without hurt, is how I imagine my grandparents were feeling waving a last good-bye to their families and friends, while setting sail for America in the early 1900s. It has been said that my maternal grandmother cried the entire ocean voyage.
All immigrants greeted by the Statue of Liberty in the harbor of New York City shared similar experiences. Except for language barriers preventing free flowing verbal communication, I grew up knowing only three grandparents, my maternal grandmother died in 1936 at the age of 39. I always wondered why they came to settle where they did, how they could leave their respective families and homeland behind, never planning to return, in an era when travel was difficult.
Until I had a child of my own, while watching him interact with one great-grandparent, briefly, that I began to have a greater curiosity about our roots. Alas, except for enjoying random anecdotes here and there, over the years, any ambition to explore family trees has never been fulfilled. Making a living and raising two sons as a single parent required all my focus and energy.
Finally, during the 1994 year-end holidays, sitting with my mother and sister, chatting into the wee hours, with the fireplace blazing and the Christmas tree lights still blinking, I was once again drawn into our past. My mother spoke about losing her mother. We had always heard that Grandma died from illness, and that was it. My mother was only 13 at the time.
After all the years, I asked, "What illness did Grandma die from exactly?" Funny how it had never occurred to any of us to specifically ask prior to now. My sister and I were astounded to learn that our Grandmother, who had borne seven children, five girls and two boys, died from complications of having an abortion, against my Grandfather's wishes of course. The official cause of death was a blood clot resulting from "exploratory female surgery."
In that instant, I was rendered speechless and experienced a tingling sensation from my hair roots that ran all the way down my spine to the soles of my feet. It was a moment of revealing truth that struck to the core of my being.
I couldn't explain it, but innately I felt a kindred spirit with my maternal grandmother, justifying why I have always possessed a streak of rebellion and a penchant for going against popular mores. In one nano-second, all my years of feeling out-of-place with family and peers was erased. I finally felt a sense of belonging somewhere, even if it was tied to the past.
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