July 2, 1963...my uncle Joe was sitting under a tree with his girlfriend in her yard. They paid no heed to the impending storm clouds. By the time my grandmother and other uncle made it the 1/2 mile up there, he was already dead. He was struck by lightening with such a force that it knocked one of his shoes off. My grandmother has it in her closet still. She is the strongest person I know, she has faced so much loss, and much of it seems to be in July. So it is a tough month at home, she is convinced she is going to die in July like the rest of her famliy, and at 83 she is still not prepared for death.
My siblings and I have little or no family history. What we know we tend to pick up by accident. Like that bit of information my sister and I read in an essay that my uncle Frank wrote in highschool (and got a D on. How do you do that? give a young boy a D on a paper in which he writes about finding his brother dead?).
We go through boxes of old photos attempting to piece together some sort of time-line and connections to the past. With my maternal side of the family. Forget my dad's side, he left them long before I was even thought of.. We tend to think of our branch of the family tree as the entire black sheep branch, (other than a cousin on my grams side that is gay.. )we tend to take the prize. With the divorced parents, lesbian (me), gay brother, sister who has 3 bi-racial kids without getting married. We carry many disapproving looks from family members as well as not many invitations to anything. I'm a little upset about it. But, most of the time, I enjoy the closeness that is developing with my siblings, as we attempt to create a history to share with the kids, because like us, they are not going to have much contact with the paternal famlies. My dad jokes about my grams family being horse theives and tied into the mob and running liquor from Canada during the prohibition, we are trying to get information about that now, but the sources for information are dwindling rapidly.
Anyway, we went up to spend the day with my grandmother on July 1st, and the whole NY state capital region was struck with a series of damaging thunderstorms. I thought she was going to jump out of her skin or burst into tears. There was such a sadness in her eyes. She kept yelling at me to stay inside and keep away from the windows. It just broke my heart. I wish that there was something I could do for her. But there just seems to be just so much pain and loss in her life, I can only tell her how much I love her and admire her strength. And then she really cries, and I cry. And I feel just that much more connected to my past.