Knitting and Grief

To finish the story of my Grandmother's House and why I remember it when I'm knitting:

When the time came to sell Grandma's House, I was newly married.  I can't say that I have a lot of grief associated with this particular Grandmother, my Father's Mother.  Except the grief of not remembering her.  The feeling that she was in my life for a very short time and then she was gone.  The knowing that I have siblings and cousins that remember so much more about her, and I'm jealous of that.  Now, this many years later, even those cousins are gone or unwilling to talk about such ancient history.

We know that the first years of a child's life are when they learn to make attachments and form life-long bonds.  What about when those bonds are severed?  I keenly remember the feeling after my Father died that everyone I ever loved was dying.  I even had some magical thinking going on, my reasoning being that people were dying because I loved them.  Somehow, if it was known by "the powers that be" that I loved someone, they were destined to die because I did not deserve them in my life.

Since that time, as an adult, I have come to the realization that I was born into a family of older than average people.  While most Baby Boomers were born to young people right after the war, and most of my friends on the tail end of the Baby Boom were born to twenty-somethings, I had been born when my Father was 42.  Compound his age with his birth order and you get lots of elderly relatives.  My work on the Family Tree is leading me to a lot of very enlightening discoveries.  For some reason, I had always believed that because my father died when I was young, my relatives all died young.  Not necessarily true.  Many of them far outlived their peers.  I have to remind myself of this as I age.  The calendar and the clock are not ticking away my life just waiting for the moment I least expect it to rip me from my loved ones.  I'm looking forward to many long years of doing more genealogy research.

And what does this have to do with Knitting?  I've found that if I spend the days that mark the anniversaries of my loved one's deaths by Making Something, I can deal with their loss in a more positive way.  This year as I was remembering my Father, as I spent some time knitting, I purposely tried to remember that day that I spent at Grandma's House for the last time.  On that day, I was not yet an obsessive knitter, and couldn't have known what all the stuff in her stash represented.  I do remember boxes of newspaper and magazine clippings of patterns.  They could have been knitting or crochet or any number of other needlecrafts.  I remember wishing that I could save all of them from the burn-pile and the junk heap.  I don't remember any books on crafting.  Had they all been carted away in the intervening 20 some years? 

Had she ever been able to afford books or had they been available where she was likely to shop?  Or did she just never see the need for anything more than what was published in the paper.  Was she so cutting edge that she didn't believe in using Old information from books that were outdated as soon as published?  Probably not, I think that's a new idea ushered in by the Information Age.  The clippings do seem to show an interest in keeping current and making what's new.  Or maybe it was just a stage in her dementia....

There were boxes of crochet thread and embroidery floss and all kinds of buttons and zippers and notions.  Gadgets and tools that I did not know enough to identify were all mixed in.  Who knows if this is the state that Grandma had left them in, or if this was the result of years of rummaging by the family?  These were obviously the cast offs and the stuff that was not seen as valuable.  The treasured items had been carried away long ago.  Rust and dust and mildew and mice had all taken their toll.  I remember thinking some pretty judgemental thoughts about my older cousins that were too squeamish to reach into a box that might also contain spiders or mouse remains.  Now, I can temper my judgement with the knowledge that this was still the time before really good allergy meds, in a family overwhelmingly predisposed to severe allergies, in the peak of allergy season, in a dusty, moldy, environment.  Some of them were probably just focused on getting done with this chore without an emergency room visit for anaphylactic reaction.  I don't recall that the wasps were very welcoming either.  And if it was probably about 100 degrees outside, what would the attic heat factor be?

So, in my thoughts, I can now have a more positive memory of Grandma's House.  I'm free to imagine her any way I want.

Knitting to cope with grief

On the anniversary of my Father's passing, I was not up to writing about it. 
Or talking about it. 
To anyone. 

Believe it or not, he died a couple of weeks before my 15th birthday.  And that was 37 years ago.  And still, every year it's a difficult day.  It "gets easier"?  Maybe, maybe not.

Now, looking back on it, I know that I really should have had some counseling, and maybe a lot of help, way back then.  But, it wasn't "the thing to do".  If you ever find yourself or a loved one in a similar situation, I urge you to Seek Help.  It's out there.

But, following the counsel that I have had since then, I went through the day carefully.  I avoided stressors, immersed myself in all things positive, stayed around supportive people.  And I spent a lot of time with my knitting in my hands or at least on my lap.  And, probably because I've also been spending a lot of time on geneaology research, I thought about my Grandmother, my Father's Mother. 

I don't really remember her.  She died, I think, when I was about 2 years old.  She lived with my family for "a while" before that, but there are conflicting reports on if that meant 14 months or 14 years.  Grandma had owned a house in the little home town, and I did get to know her house.  I know that sounds odd.

Family Reunions were always a big deal for my Father's Family.  There were a lot of kids in his generation, and they mostly had several kids each.  And by the time that I was born, my Aunts and Uncles were Grandparents and some were Greatgrandparents themselves.  When I was little, I thought that's what they meant when they said someone "was from an Old Family".  So, every year, on the appointed day, well over a hundred of our family would congregate in this tiny little town that normally had only 50 residents.  The town struggled to keep a gas station open, much less a hotel.  And very few of the family members still lived in the town.  So, the eldest Aunt that lived the farthest away bought my Grandmother's House.  It was empty most of the year, but Aunt Grace and her family would stay there when they were in the area.  A great many of the things in the house stayed just as Grandma had left them when she last was there in about 1960.  A Victrolla that we all played nonstop whenever we were there.  Knowing what those are worth now makes me question the Aunt's sanity.  A steel frame bed with very squeeky springs.  Hand made everything you can think of:  quilts, afghans, pot holders, lace doilies and table cloths, aprons, anti-maskars, braided rugs, dresser scarves, rag dollies, chair cushions, couch pillows, hot pads, water bottle covers, toilet paper cover dolls.  And clothes that they let us play dress up with;  crochet slippers, hats of all kinds, house dresses, scarves, all vintage in the extreeme. 

Eventually the time came when Aunt Grace's family decided to sell the house.  It was about 25 years after Grandma had died.  We hadn't all gone to the house for several years because the family had outgrown it for the Reunion, it being held in the Masonic Lodge by that time.  But each family was invited by turns to come over and take an item or two from the house.  As an adult, not having been there for years, everything seemed so small.  And of course everything was so worn out and broken down.  Some of the furniture had pretty much disintegrated. 

But what struck me hard was the sudden realization, when it was far too late, that my Grandmother had been a Crafter.  And now I also know that she was somewhat of a hoarder too.  All those years the house had been empty, noone had really cared what was in the Attic.  The Family was hauling out boxes of patterns that she had cut out of newspapers and magazines.   Stored in an attic all those years had destroyed them to confetti and mouse nests.