When I was a little girl, my aunt (#5 out of six siblings – 4 girls, 2 boys) died, just before Christmas. This was my first experience with death, and I was only six years old, and much confused about a lot of things, including the varying moods of people crying for a lost loved one, in between jolly Christmas carols. I noticed that my father was not only devastated to lose his sister, but was also very angry with my grandparents. It was not until many years later that I would understand the whole story.
My grandparents were weird, to say the least. One of their weirdnesses was that they insisted on keeping one of my aunts (Let’s call her J) home, apparently to take care of them, although they were still fairly spry, themselves. She was about 21, and had an irrepressible desire to go on singles’ cruises. J went on them as often as possible, to get away, and possibly find a husband. I just thought she liked the water. Meanwhile, her younger sister (K) was desperately trying to get married to anyone, just to get out of the house. I thought she was just very romantically inclined and liked to date a lot. How little I knew! It seems that every one of my father’s siblings escaped home as soon as possible, by various means.
Well, when my aunt J was killed, my grandparents approached my father and asked him to let them have my SISTER! Yes, they asked my father to hand over his daughter to them, and even intended to change my sister’s name to the name of my dead aunt and adopt her as their own daughter. That would make my sister T into my aunt J the second, and my father’s daughter into his sister, and eyurrrrrgh!
I don’t need to watch TV to get a soap opera. I just need to ask my parents about family history. But I must admit that with all the stories I have about my family, including the stealing from each other at a funeral, storing explosives in the garage, and bringing a pregnant mistress into the house to “help” the pregnant wife, I do believe this story is the weirdest.
My father’s response to my grandparents’ request was not very polite, but I am forever grateful that he had a spine! And now I see why he was so eager to take that long post overseas so soon afterwards. Having an ocean between him and his parents was a good thing at the time.
At the same time, I am so proud of my father, because he kept this from us children, and taught us to love our grandparents, despite their foibles, even as we learned to stand up for ourselves. He did not share the truly weird stories until we were old enough to deal with them. Now, we just look back and laugh. 0522-13