http://youtu.be/1xn7rjlOxfc?list=RD7WlV2z1dWcI
Innisfree
Our church
My sister spent a long time trying to trace our ancestry as many people do now usually after they retire.And it seems an interesting topic
.But what was she really looking for? Was it just the names of the Irish towns they were born in or was it more?
Well.one intriguing fact is that both of our parents were born to fathers who were illegitimate.In the late 19th and early 20th century it may have been a source of shame.So they had no family on the father’s side.
In the case of my mother,she never mentioned this nor that her father had two sisters born to his mother after she had married .For she left him with her parents and brothers. He went down the pit when he was 14.I imagine he must have felt sad and angry when his mother left him behind.
When he was 24 he got married to a young Irish woman who gave him six children.Alas she died after the last child as they had no doctor there owing to poverty leaving him alone once more.This must have caused grief amongst the children but it was never expressed.My grandad was a very silent person.
So my mother was already affected by this when she met my dad.
Ironically he had exactly the same history except it was his father who had died relatively young and his mother never recovered and took to drink in a big way.
After his mother died my dad got married and had five children.Unfortunately he died after only 11 years leaving five children.And of course grief was forbidden to us children and we were crammed together physically but never talked about our loss.I can only imagine my mother’s feelings.
My mother’s idea of a Sunday treat was to walk us 1.5 miles to the cemetery.The grave of her mother was lost in some grass and even dad’s grave had no stone on it.Later grandad was buried there and my mum and after that a stone was placed there.
I have often suffered from grief and pain and looking back it’s not where theancestors came from that matters but their stories which contains illegitamacy hence loss a father figure,then further losses causes by illness or childbirth.And there was no NHS which might have helped.
Another factor was both my grandmothers were Irish and even in their children a feeling of loss and sorrow about losing their green home country was present.We all know how Britain treated the Irish in the 19th century… starvation was just one tool.TB was common among the immigrants and my grandmother lost her parents and two brothers to that when they were only in their thirties.There was tremendous prejudice here agains the Irish until black immigrants arrived!No Irish,No Jews, were signs that were displayed until the Race Relations Act in 1964.
[Until then Jews could not join many gold clubs.I learned this from my friend Cyril who is 98 years old.His wife came here on the train which saved a lot of Jewish children [Kindertransport.. must check spelling]She was shocked they could not join the golf club where all his fellow workers went.]
So my belief that it was my dad’s death that was the problem in my family seems imcomplete.
It’s strange how my parents married someone who had a similar sad background.Nevertheless there were good times.My grandfather took great joy in his 18 grandchildren and after he retired he got a beautiful dog which died the same week he died when I was 21.Soon after that my dentist committed suicide but thst has no connection to this story that I know of…
http://www.bereavementservicemk.org.uk/Organisations.htm
How my heart sings 