Losing people

pw

I have been struck recently by the number of friends and others  of my age who have just lost their parents.And how they seem to grieve severely.When I thought  about it I realised I lost one of mine as a child  of 8 and the other when I was 35 so it seemed strange to me that people around me still had parents at all.
For my father we weren’t allowed to grieve.And my mother was very disturbed as at 15  her mum died and  she had 5 younger siblings and at 42 she had 5 youngish children to rear alone,a   repetition that was most unfortunate.Though she married a man who was known to have fragile health so maybe that was a mistake.It was during the War so maybe Nature took a hand
Then I recalled that my mother lost her mother when she was 15 and my dad lost his dad when he was 18 .
My sister did some research so she soon found neither of our grandfathers even knew teir own fathers’ names.They were both illegitimate.So having two parents who are still thriving after you grow up seems not to have been the case for three generations in my family.Loss was the pattern.Grief was repressed.My mother rarely mentioned her mother who died because they could not afford a doctor when she had problems with the birth of her sixth child.
Her father’s mother had got married when grandad was about 8  and had two daughters but we never heard him mention them.Maybe his mother was ashamed of him being alive.
Well my parents now have 24 descendants and 19 of them have had two parents all their lives so far.They are between 43 and 2 years old.Two of my nephew’s wives have had cancer but are ok now.So the pattern of loss may have stopped.But I just read an article saying that trauma can be passed down the generations so we may suffer more grief than some people do.
I  notice that my siblings and I have had many  serious health problems but whether that is because of bereavement or an inadequate childhood diet  or just chance I don’t know.On the other hand we were all quite bright.And we had not much money to go out so we spent longer studying then other people..we enjoyed it.I didn’t even know  cafes existed until I was 11..  and coffee bars also passed me by.

My father was one of 14 children and as well as losing his father he lost 5 siblings while he was growing up.One was  killed at the Somme.He was much older than Dad.Their mother was destroyed by grief after WW1 as her husband got the flu and died that year.
And fate also caused Dad’s sister to die the day I was born.
My mother was angry with me for being born as my brothers were only 1 and 2 years old.She harboured a belief that babies chose to come here.The fact that she was a Catholic using the safe period method of contraception [ the wrong way round] was not a factor.
I  was born prematurely, learned to talk  in sentences at 10 months,was toilet trained early  and learned to walk  very soon as well.I couldn’t wait to grow up and escape.I’d have been born at 3 months  if it had been  possible!I felt very sorry for my mother always but I had to escape.I felt