There was a short-notice memorial service for my Uncle Jack just a few days after he died. Margaret and I rearranged our calendars and made the drive to Michigan to be there.
Jack attended a little country church near his home. The place was full of friends and people from the congregation. I was gratified that Jack was so well loved. I deeply enjoyed hearing their stories about him, and telling them a couple of stories of my own.
I was the only blood family member there, in large part because the service was so last minute, but also because there aren’t many of us left.
I have such outstanding memories and good feelings of the Frederick family from my childhood. We came together at most holidays and had such simple good times together. I felt like I deeply belonged, and I knew I was loved.
My goodness, but were our times there almost magical. The kids would run around doing whatever all day, either in the sun or in the snow. In the evening we’d sit in the screened-in gazebo down by the lake, or when the weather didn’t cooperate, around the dining room table. My grandparents would inevitably reach that point where their wine and beer loosened their tongues, and the drunker they got the more stories they told from their lives. The stories were amazing! And probably only 90 percent true. They knew a lot of people while my grandfather was still an engineer and the family lived in South Bend. Then after everyone went to bed my brother and I would stay up stupid late and watch The CBS Late Movie.
Family is always complicated. It turned out that my grandparents were the glue holding us all together. After they died in the late 1980s, their children hardly ever came together again. My grandparents had been alcoholics, and the family was marked by it. Their youngest son, Dennis, was also an addict, and they enabled him until the end. It caused a great deal of resentment in the family, made worse when Dennis tried to use his brothers and sister in place of his deceased parents. Longtime hairline fractures among the four children split wide open. Mom and Jack remained close, but by this time he had married Maxine and followed her around the country as she pursued and completed her career. After my grandparents died, we never again had a large family gathering. My parents created a new tradition centered around their nuclear family and, in time, my family (as I was the only one to marry and have children).
Ever since, I’ve missed the good times with my grandparents and the extended family. Dick died in 2019, Mom died last year, and now Jack has passed. Dennis may still be alive for all I know, but because of some bad behavior toward my mom over the years I will not seek any level of connection with him, and should he somehow find me, I will not respond.
I had kids and two of my cousins had kids, but because the family split apart, the next generation has no real connection to the larger Frederick family.
Jack was my last link to the Fredericks. I could call him, or see him, and quickly tap into that feeling of belonging. He was always happy to hear from me, and engaged me just like the whole family used to.
On my father’s side I have connections only with a handful of cousins. To be precise, they’re children of my father’s father’s brothers and sisters, and their children. But my father didn’t involve us in his family much when I was a kid, and we didn’t develop the same level of closeness as we did with the Fredericks. I was close to my Aunt Betty and to some of her kids, but that was about it.
I’m now at the top of a family hierarchy that involves my children and Margaret’s children. It’s been true for some time, but Jack’s death made it impossible for me to deny it anymore. I wish for multi-generational connection for me and for all of our children, but it is simply not to be. I’m mourning this as much as I’m mourning Jack.
Sitting in a whiskey bar in South Bend with Margaret, late in the night after Jack’s service, we agreed to accept that we are now at the center of the generations to come. Neither of us prefers it. But we can make the best of it, and we hope, create the same kind of good feelings of belonging in the generations after us that we each experienced in our own extended families.
To get Down the Road in your inbox or reader six days a week, click here to subscribe!
To get my newsletter with previews of what I’m working on, click here to subscribe!
