Today my Dad has been gone from life for exactly 2 months. There seems to be an existential fissure created by this lunar mark, manifesting in my emotions, the remembrances of him.
Once he told me that in the Senko family, his mom's people, there was a brother who would have been his Mom's Uncle, who was killed in an accident in a brick making factory. This loss plunged the family into a deep sadness (dare I say "depression"?). I would guess that in the late 1800"s depression was not yet a concept.
The Senko family had this dark cloud, a much loved member suddenly gone. It was painful enough to be part of the impetus for Grampa Senko to leave Czechoslovakia and give the new world, America, a go. I know this feeling. I moved to the Oregon Coast after losing my husband. The idea of starting over in a fresh, new place is a balm to the pain of loss.
The Senko family moved to Kansas first. Farming was their goal. Life must have been hard there. Grampa Senko later bought land in Cornelius, Oregon, where my Grama Augusta was a young woman and met Grandad Louis somehow. This is where I wish I could ask my Dad what the timing was. They were both Catholic, which may have been a connection.
Well, The sadness seemed to linger in the Senko family, for the lost brother, because the lost Uncle information was passed on to my Dad. Augusta was not a joyful woman. She was a perfectionist, a person driven and seemingly tortured with the compulsion to social comparison. I wonder if she married quiet, handsome Louis because his father was the Mayor and an ambitious personage in the community of Milwaukie.
Grama became a hoarder in the years when I was a child. We would go to her house and she would be sitting in her chair. Grandad was usually outside puttering in the garden. I realize now he was hiding from her. She would bark out orders to him periodically. Her house was so full there were pathways to get anywhere. Eventually Grandad was forced out and ended up living in a cheap motel off skid row in downtown Portland. I recall one night we dropped him off in front of his hotel on our way back to Seattle after a Christmas holiday visit.
Grama stayed in her packed house, with the legendary boxes of unopened Barbie Dolls which I always longed for as a kid. She gave us a few, but bought many more and kept them in the stacks. I liked her. We were both an Aquarius.I tried to have meaningful conversations with her when I reached early adulthood. What hung her up though was that we wore blue jeans then, around the 70's. She thought they were dirty farmer's clothes. Her persona was virtually constructed of opinions. I see now that she was obviously very smart and ambitious. I just think she married the wrong guy, or maybe she should never have been married at all, but allowed to go to college and pursue a career. She would have been a formidable boss!
Her family story limited her. Her life function became critic to those she loved.If her family story had not been a sad one of trauma carried across generations, would she and my Dad been less critical, more easy in their skin?
I have to wonder, because as much as I try, I feel that sadness sometimes. I know my older siblings were crippled by it. There is not a day I don't have to talk to the little story teller in my head and remind her that I can take a breath, open my heart, access gratitude and go forward with generosity. I like to think that if there is a heaven, my dad and my grama are looking down and enjoying life along with me, happy that I've moved the story on to better gardens.
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