there is no percentage in remembering the past… a taj mahal song on the cd bj cut for his brothers, listening to it at work, I find I do remember and ponder the past, or isolated segements of it, the inside of the house, that peculiar shade of blue paint on the walls and the prints of paintings, the bannister going halfway up the stairs before the solid wall, and at the top the hope chest, smelling of cedar and antiquity. I liked better before mom painted it, but still … I wonder what became of it.
and so like the rest of our heritage, such as it is, we depart for lands unknown with successive generations, at first because there was no patrimony, presumably, there was nothing at all. of course, who knows? our ancestry is opaque.
could they write? did they want to forget? did they, like the rest of us, find themselves taken before they realized what had become of them, and alienated from their children, lacked a ready ear for their tale before they died. and they died young, from heart disease, and god knows what else, but the oft-used direct channel grandparents have with their grandchildren, skipping all that parent-child crap, was unavailable to us, because by the time we were ready, they were gone.
and so it goes, but did they leave nothing behind? nothing at all? no writings, no journals, no photos, no scribbles on scraps of paper that should have been discarded generations ago, but held onto because it was all that remained of a person, a human being, my grandparents, or their brothers and sisters, or their parents… what the hell became of them?