Genealogy II: Filling in Some Gaps

I've discovered that when your own family doesn't talk to you, Aunts can fill in some of the gaps. After all, they were there, and sometimes they have some remarkable stories to tell.

Mother's sister Nina (pronounced to rhyme with mynah) is a case in point. She is less than two years younger than Mom, and during one large family reunion/celebration some years back she and I had a quiet conversation in the middle of the bedlam. That's where I found out about the wedding ring. Back when my dad proposed to Mom, he had just gotten a new job that provided enough funds finally to get married on. There had been no savings before then to put aside for a wedding ring. Her younger sister had been named after a great aunt, and this Aunt Nina had given her a diamond ring as a token of their special connection. It wasn't very flashy or expensive, but it was real diamond. My grandmother, Daisy, decided to take that ring - without even asking - and give it to my Dad to give to my Mom so she could have a wedding ring. He never knew the origin of the ring, and accepted it gratefully. I never knew what Mom knew or didn't know, because it was never spoken of, and Nina, in telling me the story, begged me not to bring it up to them. It could only cause embarrassment, and Nina assured me that, had she been asked, she would gladly have turned it over to the cause. After all, she was waiting to get married too, and the sisters were married in a double wedding at Simpson Methodist Church in Minneapolis, May 4, 1941. (I figure it was a pretty good way to save money, post depression, when one has two grown daughters to provide weddings for.) Both couples fled their reception and drove to a restaurant in Farmington for a celebratory dinner before starting their new lives. That was as close to a honeymoon as they came. Nobody ever got wealthy, Nina having 7 girls to raise, and my folks buying a resort that was a financial disaster.

I told the story to my kids and brother, and got all of them to agree that after she died, Mom's wedding ring would be returned to Nina. It seemed only fair to all concerned. The only problem was, once the time came, finding the dang thing! Mom hadn't been wearing it on the day of her stroke, so it wasn't with her hospital belongings. We looked in her jewelry boxes, the safe-deposit boxes, and all the little nooks we could find where things of value might be hidden. There were plenty of those, and even things of modest value - like an assortment of pennies, nothing special, just ordinary pennies - were to be found in weirdly disguised spots. Having been robbed several years before, she was paranoid about keeping thieves from finding her valuables. There was even a ring in a film canister packed with cotton to prevent a rattle, which almost prompted me to throw it out as worthless. Finally a wedding ring was located, and I made an appointment to drop in on my aunt Nina. Not once in all this searching was the object of the search, knowledge of its story, or the intent of its destination so much as whispered to my father. I had, after all, promised Nina.

You notice I said "a" wedding ring. Not "the" wedding ring. Nina took one look at it and handed it back, informing me it wasn't hers. I in turn informed her that we had searched high and low, this was the only ring, and if it wasn't the original, it still should be given her to replace what was taken, and apologized from the whole family for how it came to us. We would feel terrible about keeping it. She finally relented and kept the ring, reminding me once again that she would have gladly given her sister the ring had she known one was needed.

We settled down for a long chat about family history. This is where she confirmed my memories of Mom's nervous breakdown and electroshock treatments. Some other things I thought I knew she dismissed, which was fine, as kids can easily misunderstand tidbits out of context. One such was some partial comment that led me to believe that my grandmother Daisy punished Mom by locking her down in a cellar. Nina insisted that the girls were never mistreated. Never!

Their father, however, was another story, and one that Nina has found hard to forgive through the years.

My grandfather was France Brogren. He's the only grandfather still alive after I was born, and I have a single clear memory of him. I believe I was four at the time, when my family already had moved up to the resort 200 miles north of Minneapolis, where most of my relatives lived. We came down several times a year for visits. On this particular one he took me out for a walk through the city, covering perhaps a mile at most. I recall him as a tall, dark, gentle, quiet presence. He held my hand as we walked. The neighborhood had a train tracks that ran a level lower than the street, so the bridge over the tracks was just a flat part of the road. We were standing stopped on such a bridge when a train passed. The incredibly loud noise and vibrations as it passed terrified me and I started crying, despite his gentle assurance that it couldn't hurt me. Once it passed I was fine, but the walk was ended and he took me back to their home.

Nina relates that he was having problems with aging, likely mild dementia. I don't know that it was ever diagnosed, but he started needing more care from Daisy. This didn't fit in with her idea of what her lifestyle should be like, so she had him committed to the insane asylum at Wilmar, miles away and out of her hair. He was aware enough that the commitment broke his heart, and he didn't live many years after that. Nina and her husband Ilerd would go out and visit him, and occasionally check him out for periods of time and bring him to stay with them on the farm where they lived. One of her favorite memories is of him out at the edge of a field with the lambs and one of her daughters, where he had an opportunity for normalcy and her daughter got a grandfather for a time. They couldn't keep him all the time, and he would have to return to Wilmar, much as everybody hated it. His case wasn't unique: Nina says there were a handful of men in his condition who'd been committed for the same reason, quiet ciphers who could no longer care for themselves, warehoused among the noisily and violently insane. It was her husband's understanding of and care for her father that is one of the best things she loved about her husband all through their marriage. It gave me a new understanding of my uncle as well, since Mom had never made a secret of thinking that Ilerd was never good enough for her sister.

I passed on sharing that opinion with my aunt.