#genograms

I will say, I did meet Marion, though I do not remember. She died in 1998, at the ripe old age of 88, though she seemed older. I remember more family stories, told around kitchen tables, about Marion than ever meeting her in person. According to multiple sources:

1) Deeply unattractive. My grandmother tried to correct this "No, she wasn't ugly, she just wasn't pretty.[...]There was nothing pretty about her". In a later conversation, Aunt Audrey had a more direct opinion. "She was as ugly as a mud post"

2) She was jealous. My aunt Audrey (my great-grandmother's sister) told me how Lillian, Marion's older sister, was beautiful, sweet and desirable. Marion scorned the attention her sister got. Lillian was engaged, and shortly before her wedding, passed away. She was buried in her wedding dress. Frank Miller, the man who Lillian was to marry, asked Marion to marry him a short time later. She immediately shot him down, telling him that she had been second choice her entire life, and he was crazy if he thought she would be with him.

3) She wasn't kind to most people. This is self explanatory. She barked orders and after the death of her husband, Lester, she lived alone. Marion did, however, have a soft spot for Aunt Audrey and my grandmother, Darlene. Oh yes, and she also had a soft spot for animals. "I wanted to run over her more than I wanted to run with her" was about what Audrey had to say on caring for Marion.

4) She was a crazy cat hoarder. According to my aunt, in her old age, Marion would rescue any animal in need of help- and thus she acquired a larger-than-normal number of cats. Her house was a wreck, she smelled like cat urine.

5) She was in a nursing home. This is the only image of have of her- a picture of my great grandmother, grandmother, mother, aunts, and cousins, all standing around Marion's wheelchair in her nursing home. She only ended up here after Aunt Audrey could no longer care for her alone, but Audrey continued to visit her regularly until Marion passed.

6) She smoked and drank like a sailor.

(Marion, left, Lillian, right)

I tell you these things to paint for you the picture I had of Marion. Bitter, unpleasant, crude, alone, angry, smelling of cat urine.

And this is the image of her I had, until about two years ago, when I was sent on my first genogram adventure for one of my social work classes. We were to pay special attention to relationships. Marion? Hostile. To everyone. Jealous of her sister. Reclusive.

Marion is seated front and center, in front of  Lillian and between Laura and Ambrose.

Around this time, Aunt Audrey added one more bit of information to the story: Marion had a baby out of wedlock, and gave it up for adoption. She never had any more biological children.(Later, Audrey would admit that she had known about this child- he was born with an array of health issues)

So, as I trolled back on Ancestry.com, peering through Census data, Social Security indexes and graves, I discovered him.

Paul.

He was there, on the 1930 census, living with Laura ( my great-great-great grandmother and Marion's mother), Lillian, and Marion. All of the forms of this generation listed who the head of household was (Laura) and how each member of the household was related to the head. Marion: Daughter. Lillian: Daughter. Paul: Grandson.

The baby wasn't given up for adoption at all.

Through a series of links, I found Paul's grave. He died the year that census was taken, 1930. As did Lillian, which I knew about. Aunt Audrey had told me the story- how it devastated the family, how she was buried in the dress she was to be married in. Lillian was special. Her memory was special and her photo cherished. She was mourned in public.

And Paul, Marion's boy? Adopted, or so the family said.

As I stared at the screen that day, a sadness came over me. Suddenly, I understood some of Marion's bitterness.

I let it go after that. Life goes on, I don't live in my family records.

But today, I found his death certificate online. Filled in mostly by Marion herself. Her hand writing delicate and wispy. She filled in the child's details: when he was born, where they lived together. She wrote her name and the name of the his father, William. William had never been on my radar. (I will come back to him).

An official clearly filled in Paul's cause of death. Influenza, with bronchitis as a secondary cause.Only months after Lillian died.

I just cannot imagine a time when the flu could so easily take a person in a family, in the same year. I could not imagine Aunt Marion, at 19, signing the death certificate of a son that I am sure no one wanted her to raise. But that is the way of my family, we do what we want just to show we can. But, alas, she never got the opportunity to prove herself, and then, to add insult to injury, the family spreads the tail that she gave him up for adoption.

I recalled that this was 1930, pregnancies outside of marriage were a big deal. And even if that happened (as it did other times in the family tree), the couple married and pretended that the baby just came early, even though her or she was huge. So this made me wonder, where was this William? Who was he? The best answer I can give is this: He was either a middle aged, habitual bachelor who lived in the same town as Marion or a young man who lived far away- who ended up marrying a year or two later and having more children. Either way, they didn't end up together, and either of those occurrences would have been a pretty scandalous situation.

I leafed through some of my own documents of Marion's, given to me by Audrey. Marion married Lester five years later, evidenced by a floral guest book, a marriage license, and a short article in the local paper. She did not wear white, but deep purple. Her life moved forward eventually. But she never had any more children. And then Marion became the bitter woman the family talks about.

These discoveries sadden me. Poor Marion, called ugly and crass by her family. And after the death of her son, she thumbed her nose at her family as much as she could. She didn't keep a tidy house, she participated in "unladylike" and "non-Christian" activities. She through all of her trust into her furry children. I can understand why.

It's days like this I wish time-travel was actually a thing. Well, often, I wish this because I'd really like to be trapped in a Tardis with David Tennant, but this time, I want to go back and hug my the aunt I only ever knew as awful.

This, friends, is why I want to look deeper into my background, so that I may honor the stories of the Marions in my family and in my new Beaver family.

Marion is featured in the center.

That is all. Much love