There's No-one Left to Ask

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There is now no-one left from two generations ago in the Hesters or any of the families related to them by marriage. My mother finds this very frustating as there are things she wants to know about the past which she can't find out - they were never written down, and they were just items of family lore where previously she could just go and ask a family member but now they're gone forever.

Is this an experience that you can identify with? Do you feel a sense of loss when older relatives die, not just through the natural process of being bereaved and missing them being around, but also because they were a vital source of information that has now been lost?

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 10 September 2004 10:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Yup. My grandmother's ragu sauce. I even did make the effort of finding it out, and carefully stored it on my palm pilot. Which I then broke.

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 10 September 2004 10:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I hate the fact that I can't share things with both sets of grandparents anymore. I find it frustrating that I can't find out about their lives either.

― PinXor (Pinkpanther), Friday, 10 September 2004 10:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Mark's story is like a tragic parable for our times - god knows how many years of tradition lost through the failures of modern technology.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 10 September 2004 10:06 (twenty-one years ago)

My British grandmother has told me some wonderful things in the last few years - we only really started speaking after her more loquacious husband died. She went to Germany in 1938 (she was 17 or so), which strikes me as peculiar, but she had a great time, dating German officers, watching Hitler speaking and such and such (and no, she's not in the least right wing - she obviously didn't know all that much about the undercurrents and thought it was all super fun).

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 10 September 2004 10:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I was extremely lucky to have all four of my grandparents for the first 27 years of my life. My maternal grandmother, in particular, often tells me stuff because she has an idea of it being Important to pass things on. It's usually about things like the horse and cart that came round to deliver ice and how sugar came in giant lumps you had to cut up yourself. I'd like to ask them about the war (my maternal grandfather said once that remembers the end of the first world war) and have tried to ask more questions, but the last time I saw them I asked Grandad about a picture of him and a huge gang of friends at a dance in the early thirties and he looked at it and said "everyone's dead now" and then came over rather quiet. I'll probably be more tentative in future, even though I'm very curious. Grandad is still the only member of our family to have seen the pyramids (he was in Africa during the war) and he has a couple of terrific photos of them, and one of an Egyptian woman swathed in black, carrying her baby son.

― Madchen (Madchen), Friday, 10 September 2004 10:19 (twenty-one years ago)

I learnt a lot about my grandparents on my mother's side after they had died because they left behind a lot of paintings and poetry and diaires and books that I'd never known existed when they were alive. It was really interesting to look through their things and find all this amazing stuff (a faded letter from John Betjeman, a diary from my grandfather's university days written entirely in blank verse, books they'd written amusing anotations in), but it was sad that I couldn't ask them about any of it. The best thing I found was this box marked "HEADS" with dozens of really great sketches of soldiers' heads that my grandfather had done while he was in the army.
My grandparents on my father's side are dead too, but they didn't leave much behind and there were no other living relatives that we know about on that side, so I'll probably never that much about them other than what I remember or my Dad has told me. Apparently, they were freemasons.

― Cathy (Cathy), Friday, 10 September 2004 10:54 (twenty-one years ago)

This is the wrong time for me to be answering this thread. Maybe in a couple of weeks, I can have some perspective on it.

― Super-Masonic Black Hole (kate), Friday, 10 September 2004 10:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm going to refer my grandchildren to my blog.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Friday, 10 September 2004 11:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Unfortunately my grandparents didn't keep any diaries. I wonder if they were the kind of people who thought that having someone take an interest in their inner world was somehow distasteful? My own mother is a great documenter, and is always slightly upset when I don't take care of photos and old mementos, as is my sister.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Friday, 10 September 2004 11:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I've only ever known my maternal grandmother and don't get on with her especially or see her at all often. Plus I have almost zilch interest in the past. Meaning I have no idea wtf any of you are going on about.

― Jimmybommy JimmyK'KANG (Nick Southall), Friday, 10 September 2004 11:52 (twenty-one years ago)

She went to Germany in 1938

my late (american) grandmother spent time in germany in the mid-thirties as well. if her later politics were anything to go by, she probably very much approved of the changes taking place there at the time. :(

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Friday, 10 September 2004 11:53 (twenty-one years ago)

The weird thing is, I discovered only this year that my paternal grandparents actually kept a quite detailed diary, or rather a record of things that the family did. When I read it, I felt a bit like I was reading my own police file.

I know loads more stories and information about my mother's side of the family. My mum was raised by her maternal grandmother, so these stories go quite far back into the mists of the Victorian age and the 18th Century. I guess it's weird that I know more about my great-great-grandparents than I do about my own grandmother.

― Super-Masonic Black Hole (kate), Friday, 10 September 2004 11:57 (twenty-one years ago)

My Granny lived in Brooklyn in the early 1950s!

― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 10 September 2004 11:58 (twenty-one years ago)

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