Yesterday I was listening to Terry Gross on NPR. (
A 'Final Salute' to Fallen Marines : NPR if you want to read more)
She was talking to a reporter who followed around a Marine that is part of a pair (the other is a chaplain) whose job it is to notify families when a loved one has been killed in Iraq. (He wrote a book called Final Salute)
As you can imagine, this was a heart-rending interview and discussion. As I cried in the car while listening to this, I realized that my own grandfather had died in a war (WWII). Rather, he is presumed dead. There was never that awful knock on the door. My grandmother was in a displaced persons camp with my (newborn) mother in a different country anyway.
I don't know this story. It was not talked about. My grandfather was never talked about. My mother never knew him. My grandmother had plenty to deal with travelling across Europe and later to America (starting out pregnant and arriving in the US with a 5yo) with a younger brother and her own mother to care for. So my grandmother just did what needed to be done.
I don't even know when she found out that her husband was last seen in the operating room (he was a doctor) in a mobile hospital just before it was bombed. I know she was bitter about her loss. But she never talked about it except to say that she had done enough for her country, she had given her husband. I only heard this once.
All of this came to me in a flash as I cried over the story of a soldier who died while his wife was pregnant. He slept with the baby blanket she had knit knowing that he would not be home in time for the babies birth but wanted the baby to know what he smelled like.
As my heart filled with grief over this soldier whom I don't know, my own families story dropped into my head and it occurred to me that (I would guess) no one ever grieved my grandfather. That generation would grit their teeth and bare whatever was dealt them. They had to do that to survive and move on.
I then thought of the Family Consellations work Deborah has mentioned. Which I obviously REALLY, REALLY need to read. I want to grieve for my grandfather. Not for only for myself, but also for my mother who grew up w/o a father. For my grandmother, who remained single for the rest of her life. For the joy and stability they missed. For how different things could have been.
The situation made (or amplified) my grandmothers strength and power and gave me an amazing role-model of a woman. But what if he had come back from the war to be with us?
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