Family matters

I’ve got a personal project going on that I’m keeping a bit close to my chest for now, but it has involved me hunting down a lot of old family documents: birth certificates; proof of citizenship; marriage certificates. The whole works. Obviously, I have all of the documents that pertain to me personally. You can’t survive in Germany if you don’t have every relevant document at your fingertips, but I’ve had to track down a lot of documents related to my mother and my German grandparents.

Some of it has been eye-opening. I found out that my parents got married in March 1959, not April. I know they always celebrated April so, in all likelihood, they had their civil service in March and then their church service in April, which became the one they celebrated. That’s fairly common in Germany: I just had no idea that they got married on March 5. Tracking down my grandparents’ marriage certificate was an even wilder ride. First I discovered that their two surviving children had no idea in which year their parents got married, which made me feel a lot better about not knowing about my parents being married in March, not April. Then, when we did get the document, it took a team of about 15 people to sort through the old-fashioned spiderweb handwriting to figure out what year they actually got married. There was a phase when our candidates were 1921, 1922, 1923 or 1931. That’s how hard it was to read the handwriting (the eventual winner was 1931).

But what really got me thinking was the series of official stamps along the side of my grandparents’ wedding certificate, marking the birth of each of their children. There are five of them. But I only ever knew my Mom and three of her siblings because the fourth child died, I believe during World War II.

What’s strange is that I know nothing about her. I feel like I have her name on the tip of my fingers. Rosemarie? But I’m also pretty certain that that’s not right. I know I’ve seen her grave and I’m pretty sure my Mom said she died of scarlet fever, but these are 30-plus-year-old memories. The sad fact of the matter is that I know nothing about this child. Of the two surviving members of the family, only my uncle would have any memories of her, since my aunt was born nearly 20 years after the rest of her siblings. And it’s not that I don’t enjoy speaking to my uncle, but we’re also not that close. Me calling up and asking him to reminisce about the sister who died nearly 80 years ago would be awkward, at best. Upsetting, at worse.

How is there so little known about this child? Who was (is?) my aunt. What does it say about my efforts to keep Colin’s memories alive? Is some grandchild of mine going to sit down in 60 years and try to remember the name of that one uncle he heard about, but really isn’t more than a ghost of a memory at that point? Then again, does it even matter? I never met either of my German grandparents. There’s one hysterical story about my grandmother tying a child to a chamber pot in a potty training episode that went horribly wrong. Everyone seems to remember my grandfather hauling away the carcass of a dog that got hit by a car. Oma was apparently very strict. Opa was apparently very nice. That’s not a lot of details to slap together a fake memory for someone like me. And they had full lives. There are days when I feel I just need to accept that Colin will be forgotten and it’s enough that I remember him.

But I hope Emma and Noah, if they have kids, talk about Colin. I hope they have some memories they can pass on. It would mean a lot to me if a little of Colin got into the next generation along the line.

His eighth birthday was this week. We trekked there as a family, as crummy as the weather was, ignoring the sign that said no dogs are allowed in the cemetery. It’s funny: I could swear Murphy grew nervous the further we walked into the cemetery, and I don’t think it’s because he can read and he was worried about getting thrown out. The mystery person who leaves a birthday candle for Colin every year showed up again: There was an 8 on his headstone. We lit candles and sparklers and tried to do some magic wish paper, but the weather didn’t really cooperate. I couldn’t do much of anything, trying to keep Murphy on a short leash as I was. But we were remembering him. And, as sad as that is, that’s about all we can do for him. We just have to keep doing it for as long as we can.

(Note: The document pictured above was not the one we were working with when we were trying to ascertain my grandparents’ wedding date, for all of you who feel the need to point out that this one clearly reads “1931.” Trust me, the handwriting was much more challenging on the document we had.)