A non-knitting post today. A little while ago I was chatting with a friend about families and how complicated they can be. We both found that the families we grew up in had lots of things that weren't said or acknowledged.
In my granny's house there was a shrine to her eldest son, my father's brother, who died on the Matterhorn at the age of 24. He had already successfully climbed the mountain and that day he and his friends decided to go up without a guide. There was an avalanche and I think the whole group perished. In her hall my grandmother had a huge framed photo of William, plus his iceaxe nicely arranged and a framed certificate from the Royal Humane Society for bravery in saving someone's life. I saw these every time I visited but nobody ever talked about them and I never heard the details of the lifesaving incident.
After my grandmother's death all sorts of things found their way to my parents' house, but it wasn't until after my father's death a couple of years later that we all noticed that there was no sign of the photo, certificate, or - most oddly - the iceaxe. I think for all those years he had quietly bottled up feelings of anger, rivalry, and who knows what. When the chance came he just dumped the objects without explaining or justifying himself to anyone. I hope it was a relief!
It would have been my father's 82nd birthday today. He died quite a while ago now and although I do think of him a lot, his birthday doesn't cast a shadow over November as it did for the first few years. November is gloomy enough without that!
