Traces of Life
It was the long, cold winter nights that made me do it. With my husband working late nights, and a pre-schooler asleep in her room keeping me housebound, what else could I do? I finally tackled the onerous task of sorting seemingly hundreds of musty old family photos that lay loosely scattered inside dusty, battered cardboard boxes by my parentage, whose lives were obviously too busy living the moment. These fragments of “memories” of people who themselves now existed only in memory were my inheritance and legacy.
Who were these people? Some I had been told were “Aunt Lucy” or “Cousin Tammy.” Others were total strangers peering out from tattered and torn brown photos. The clothing and hairstyles against an unfamiliar backdrop told of another time and place in history. Places I had never seen or been, yet vague memories from childhood still floated in my mind. The fixed faces on these fractured photos were unknown to me. Yet, I carted these decaying remnants along with all the important household belongings wherever we moved. Why had I not discarded them?
I painstakingly placed these traces of life under a protective sheet in photo albums, one by one. Preserving them was the goal – for what I did not know. That question wouldn’t be answered until many years later when I received a letter that launched an unexpected personal journey.
Bold, black type on the unfamiliar letterhead demanded my attention. “Marci F,” Hollywood, Florida. Spam is pretty expensive by snail mail, I thought, and proceeded to toss it in the trash when one short sentence suddenly leaped out at me.
“I am your second cousin on your mother’s side,” it read. “My grandmother and your grandfather were siblings.”
Maybe it was more scam than spam but I had to pay attention. What did she want? Credit card numbers? Transfer a million dollars out of some remote African country? I read further with guarded skepticism.
“In the process of my genealogical research,” she wrote, “I found our mutual cousin ‘Marilyn,’ who gave me your name and contact information. I would like the names and birth dates of your family in order to register this information with the Yad Vashem in Israel.”
I knew this was the memorial center for the murdered six million Jews and a symbol of the rupture of families engendered by the Holocaust. My doubts began to dissipate as it took on a flavor of authenticity. After confirming its legitimacy with Marilyn, I provided Marci with the information she requested. I did not pursue further personal contact, however, because frankly, I have not been blessed or cursed with the need to search out relatives who could be more of a blemish than a blossom on my family tree. But, things were about to change.
Circumstances arose the next winter that would bring my husband and me to Florida. I contacted Marci and we arranged to meet for lunch. I hadn’t anticipated any emotional reaction, yet when I greeted this pretty, dark-eyed lady we hugged each other warmly. She appeared similar in age, well-dressed and refined in manner. She had been a teacher, divorced from her husband, with two grown children.
“We have two other cousins who live in Florida,” she announced, “whose grandparents are also siblings of our grandparents.”
Shock and disbelief consumed me. I had barely absorbed her existence.
“I’ll arrange a brunch at my home so you can meet them,” she promised with a smile. And true to her word the cousins all gathered at her home the following week.
A strange mix of emotions coursed through me as the past and present began to meld. Until recently we were totally unaware of the others’ existence. Suddenly we had a common thread tying us together – our grandparents. Moreover, I am now in possession of a picture of our shared lineage – our great-grandfather. I was told that the grandparent siblings had all come to the United States in the 1930s to escape Hitler’s rise to power but my grandfather was the only one sent back. Not from disease, mind you, but a leg deformity – the result of an accident. Sadly, his fate was among the millions of Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
For the first time, my grandfather became more than a lifeless face on a faded brown photo. Feelings of sadness, then anger, pulsed through my veins. My mother’s father’s life had been cut short. Not by a natural disaster like an earthquake, but by a man-made catastrophe. Nature’s cataclysmic events kill randomly, but humans ravage and murder with purpose. While we had been spared the agony of their deaths, history had changed the lives of those who lived, splintering family shards across the globe, many of which will never be repaired. The “rupture engendered by the Holocaust” had become real and personal.
Yet, it was exciting to give life and meaning to these lifeless photos. After a four-hour brunch came to a pleasant end, plans were discussed for a brunch next winter, ensuring a future for this fractured family. As my husband and I drove back to our condo, my mind was still spinning with the concept of transforming strangers into family – blossom or blemish.
On my return home, I turned my attention anew to the pictures I had rescued. As I searched through the photos, torn and fragmented like these families, I became aware of why I had kept these treasures without fully realizing their value at the time. It seemed as if I held on to these bits and pieces of history waiting for their significance to materialize. These images suddenly transcended time and geography and were now transplanted into my world in the 21st century. I knew now for whom I had preserved them. I preserved them for me.