Family stories you don't share with ANYONE

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Pretty boring compared to the other posts in here but…

After my aunt died, I was trying to organize some old photos that she’d left for my mom. I could ID some but not all.

That branch of the family, while horizontal, hangs pretty low to the ground. It really comes down to her sister not being much of a mother. My aunt was dirty. And smelly. And didn’t care. If she ever took a bath, you couldn’t prove it by me.

In fact, my grandmother was more mother to her children than she was. You could kind of see the inverse relationship between grandma’s vigor and their uprightness: the oldest turned out pretty ok. The second was still good…work your way down the line and they get wilder.

So I asked her to ID one of the baby pictures of a cousin. I thought the baby looked uncomfortable, and it reminded me of those old dolls with the wires inside that little girls bend a pose into. Mom couldn’t give me the name right off, which for her is just weird. “That’s the one that died,” mom finally said.

Wha? I didn’t know any of them died.

Talking to my older sister later, it turned out that the aunt had lain down for a nap with the baby, rolled over in her sleep, and suffocated it.

Years later, I told mom about the story. “Well, she never talked about it. We’re not really sure but that’s what we think.”

Suddenly I felt really bad about how some of us had avoided her while she was alive. “I guess she just gave up after the baby died, stopped taking care of herself, etc. because of her grief?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” mom replied, “She always hated taking baths, even when we were kids.”:smack:

62

It looks like I left out something: the baby in the photo was dead when the photo was taken.

“Took him right out of the casket and propped him up on a couch in the funeral parlor, then snapped his picture” my mom said. No wonder he looked stiff as a wire doll.

63

My cousin had a book written about him. And, I just noticed, has his own Wikipedia entry. Follow the link if you’re interested. I don’t have any first hand information to add, except that it was bizarre picking up the book in Safeway and seeing pictures of my aunts, uncles and cousins in the photo section. That’s also how I discovered that his sister is a dead ringer for me.

My paternal grandfather’s brother abandoned his three kids in a remote cabin, way up north (Canada) to die over the winter. I believe he had a couple of boys around the ages of 6 and 7, plus a baby. By the time they were discovered, the boys were nearly dead, and the baby had been gone for months. The horror of those poor little kids trying to keep the baby alive as long as they could is a haunting image in my mind. The boys got adopted out, so while we know of that branch of the family, we don’t really know each other.

My maternal grandmother was born in 1910 in Russia. Her English was never great, but she described her father as a general in the Russian army. When the revolution happened, her mother found out that they were on an execution list, and they barely escaped (with next to nothing) into Poland. The escape story was pretty good in and of itself. Maybe I’ll come back later and share how my grandmother nearly got thrown into the Black Sea. Since becoming an adult, I’ve been really interested in what the family was in Russia - I remember my grandmother recalling a large estate from her childhood. But unfortunately, my grandmother had passed on, and left nothing I could track our history back with. And I was left with the impression that they did their best to hide their identity in Poland.

There are actually more interesting stories, but I think this is good for now. I feel like I have a pretty interesting lineage - Metis trappers from northern Canada on my dad’s side, Russian nobility (of some unknown sort) on my mother’s side.

64

I imagine so they could keep food production up, especially during the war.

Especially of belt-onions…

d&r

oh, Karweenie, as great & disturbing as your stories have been so far, I still want to hear about Cousin Iris & her Mom.

NEW: Never mind! Just saw the previous page’s story!

65

Man, that was sad…

how is Iris-Diane doing now?

66

My mother’s grandmother owned a beauty salon for years and years. All her daughters worked in it, and my mom grew up around it (thus making my mom think she knows how to cut hair, but that’s another story). I don’t really know the details of it (never figured out a good way to ask) but I do know that the beauty salon burnt to the ground. I also know that great-grandma’s son-in-law and his son went to jail for arson. The DA apparently tried to prosecute a third person in all of this, my mom’s brother. I don’t know if he was guilty as well, but I do know that man could bullshit his way out of anything and charges were never formally brought against him.

67

Tell! Tell!

As an aside, my paternal grandmother’s family is Czech. Their family name means “lazy bastard.”

My family is filled with jaw-dropping stories of weird awesome.

68

:frowning: :eek:

Last I heard, there was some contention between her and her brothers about Glen’s funeral; it was resolved a few months ago. Payment for funeral expenses or some such.

69

I was telling the story to a nurse once and she barely reacted. She said, “Yeah, I figured the baby was dead. Especially years back, especially among poor people. It was their one and only chance to get a photograph before burying him.”

70

My dad got drunk one time and smashed my sister in the mouth with a steel pipe. She had to get dentures.

She’s only twenty-two. :frowning:

71

My other grandfather took off before my dad was born. My grandmother eventually got a divorce due to abandonment (seven years later), and lived the rest of her life under the then-current rules of etiquette for divorced women. That is, she never dated or remarried, living the rest of her life on her own. She may have like it that way, as it allowed her to be fully independent.

(I’ve seen her marriage license and divorce certificate, and my dad’s birth certificate, all of which prove that Dad was in fact legitimate, no matter what my mother says. :D:)

72

Was this a one time deal, or part of a pattern of abuse? If I were your sister, I’d be practicing with a steel pipe of my own!