#evakko

As a grandchild of a WW2 refugee, my relationship with this day is complicated. Every year, the newspapers tell the stories of the Valiant War Heroes (aged ca. 103 by now) who Fought a Brave Fight and then went home to Business As Usual.

But it wasn't business as usual, was it.

My grandfather was one of the Carelian speaking refugees transferred to Central Finland when the border moved. His parents had Carelian and Russian sounding surnames they rushed to change as soon as they could. Ryssä, people called them - Russian - which in the aftermath of the war was a potentially lethal stigma. They retained their Russian Orthodox Christian faith in theory, but my grandfather and his siblings grew up atheists or at least very secular. I don't know if it was their choice or because the Orthodox were treated as filth. Possibly both. My father was baptised Lutheran - the mainstream religion in Finland - just to be safe. They never spoke their home language, Carelian, again.

My grandfather died of alcoholism, so did his big sister, my favourite great aunt. Their last remaining sibling is paving her way to heaven with pills and vodka as I write this. They never, ever spoke of the war. It was more comfortable to reach for oblivion.

And so the Happily Ever After stories of the War Heroes seem to be in direct conflict with the actual lived lives of their descendants. I don't know what went on in the new homes of the Carelian refugees after the war. I don't know what my grandfather and his siblings remember of the war, because they never spoke of it.

I only have the handed down trauma that my parents refuse to discuss. I have the rocking chair my great grandparents brought with them from Impilahti. And I have a million questions that will never be answered.