A Trip to the Coast Put Off

A Trip to the Coast Put Off

May 24, 2022

This was the day I’d originally planned to go to the Seacoast – Salisbury, Mass., to “visit” my mum, the area where she grew up and where she came to me after she passed, asking me to “take her home.”

I go to the Salisbury Beach Reservation once a year. It’s one more way to stay connected to her. The place is a camping area now and I like to go before the season opens and it gets crowded. It’s beautiful and I wander the area between Black Rocks Creek, the Merrimac River, and the Atlantic, enjoying the views and remembering the stories she told of her childhood.

This year, though, I’ve decided not to go due to the gas prices. But I got up this morning thinking how I’m a heavy woman like my gramma was heavy… she was a lot taller than I, though. Do I have her genes?

I don’t have many stories of her. I have a couple old photos … one of me at 2 or 3 years old sitting on her lap in bed before she passed. I talk about my mum a lot, but she never talked about hers… not the emotional side, not the missing her mother part.

Gram died not long after that photo was taken and five days after my brother was born. How did this affect my mum? She lost her mother and had a new baby and a toddler to care for at the same time. She was only in her mid-20s. That must’ve been horribly traumatic for her. Goodness, I know how wrecked I was (and still am) when my mum passed, and she was in her 80s and I in my late 50s.

People didn’t really talk about emotional issues in the past. Even a lot of veterans returning from the war wouldn’t talk much about what happened. Maybe it was because the attitude was to not talk about it. Maybe back then there was more of an attitude of “getting over it” and “moving on.” There was almost an aura of shame if you talked about such things.

Today, we’re more apt to talk about feelings. I believe it’s important. It’s not to feel sorry for ourselves, but it’s about freedom to speak and tell our stories. And there’s a difference between a “woe is me” and “feel sorry for me” demeanor. It’s speaking to tell our stories. What happens to us helps makes us who we are.

I also believe that in telling our stories, we may also help one another. It makes us feel so not alone when we hear of others who have dealt with similar situations.

I wish I knew more of my family’s stories. I wish I knew who they really were and not just names on old photos or on a family tree. (And there are old photos with no names on them – and I don’t know if they were relatives or not.)

I waste a lot of time trying to find some history on my mother’s side of the family.

I am sad.