Survivors Every One

Other Gramma became a widow a year later after her mother-in-law and adult children had all left the home. Stoically, she showed no grief, gritted her teeth and carried on. No explanations, no stories, not even any lies came from Other Gramma’s lips. Ten months later she had sold the farm, bought a house in town, and spent the next forty-five years living on her own, while managing her personal life and finances in a seemingly successful way.

Every Sunday morning, on our way to church, my Dad stopped to pick her up and take her along. Getting into the back seat beside us girls, she ignored us completely. Although she could speak English, she chose instead to speak to my parents using a German dialect we didn’t understand. We were not entitled to participate in their conversation. A very private woman, she never pulled us close or showed us a warm and loving side; that we got from Oma. Continuing through our teens and young adulthood Oma remained our constant, cheerful, loving, and precious grandmother.

We couldn’t understand the differences between the two grandmothers, but our Oma was the antidote to Other Gramma. We had Oma, darling Oma, and Other Gramma didn’t matter. We grieved for Oma when she pre-deceased Other Gramma, but began to see the truth of Other Gramma’s life, when in her 90s, it finally showed itself. Plagued with dementia, her untold stories erupted from her soul unbidden. They were horror stories. Clutching her purse under her arm, she rushed through our house one Christmas Day shouting “the Bolsheviks are coming! The Bolsheviks are coming.” In the fog of her memories and while shaking her fist at us, she railed against my sister and me, by now in our 20s. My father could bear no more:; he could not tolerate her outbursts against us, his children. As he drove her home we recounted her behaviour between us while laughing at her, crazy old Other Gramma. That memory brings me shame to this day.

Three women, all sharing a common background, were forced to live in poverty in a strange country – while missing the support of extended family members, familiar surroundings, and common language – somehow learned to move on. Each one haunted by memories of war and loss found, in her own way, the strength to build a new life for herself without the love, protection, decisions and/or directions of her husband. My mother, a first generation Canadian and a farmer’s wife, carried on the legacy of my two grandmothers. Once she and my Dad bought their farm she worked with him on the fields from dawn til dusk while raising five children and managing a home. Upon his sudden death, my Dad left her a widow at 58. She lived independently for another 30 years on the farm she loved.

These are the stories I’ll tell my baby granddaughter when she reaches the age to climb up on my knee and ask for a story. I’ll tell her about the lives of the courageous women who came before us. My two grandmothers, great grandmother and my mother, resilient, strong-willed, determined women who demonstrated personal power in the face of adversity. This baby girl will become as proud as I am of her female ancestors, survivors every one.