I have been sitting working on putting together some notes on my children’s ancestry while I listen to the news on NPR. A large portion of the news is focused on the devastation in China. I listen, stunned, to the personal, tragic stories of individuals waiting as workers dig through rubble looking for children, parents and other family members. The contrast between my cataloguing of my ancestors’ lives and the family trees that have been brought to an end in the span of only moments is stark. So many people lost their lives and so many people have only one child, that whole lineages ended abruptly; a forest of family trees has been felled.
While as a listener I cannot feel the depth of the emotions the waiting and hoping families feel, I am taken through the ups and downs of uncertainty, hope, dismissal, faith, despair and tragedy. Would that the photos I have of my ancestors in the 19th and 20th centuries, come to life and tell me their stories of hope and despair, uncertainty and joy. In the absence of oral history, I listen to the stories of my ancestors through bits and pieces of newspaper articles or obituaries printed decades ago. Simultaneously, through the news traveling half way around the world, I hear the silence of future generations, whose stories will never be written.
1 comment :
Kate, that is the most poignant writing about the tragedy that I have read.
It should be shared. Would you consider sending it to the Andover Paper or the New York Times?
Love Jackie
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