The Roots We Spread
Abandonment has deep roots in my family history.
Premature deaths took the lives of several generations of my maternal grandparents and left young children without one or the other parent. The fierce sense of loss and sadness spread its roots like a cancer throughout my ancestry. Manifesting in misunderstood behaviors and denial of what those behaviors represented.
In 1895 at the age of five, my maternal great-grandfather (George) and his two brothers lost their mother. She was fifty-three. My great-great-grandfather remarried four years later. In 1900 their newly formed family set off on an adventure to the United States from southern Russia (Odesa, Ukraine region). Their destination, the central plains of North Dakota to claim their free land along with many Germans from Russia during the turn of the century.
My great-grandfather George went on to marry at twenty-three having three boys of his own (one of whom was my grandfather Joseph b. 1916). Tragedy struck when the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918 took George at the age of twenty eight leaving his wife and three young sons behind. A heartbreaking repeat of the previous generation and what seems like a bizarre affliction in my lineage.
