What Message Would Your Ancestors Leave You?

Commentary

My maternal grandfather fought Cossacks during World War I in Poland. Anticipating that he would be drafted for a third time, he left for America to establish a business and a home before bringing over his wife and four children.

He sent money consistently so they could buy steamship passage. But the war interrupted the mail, and his letters did not reach them.

After the war, when the mail resumed, they received a bundle of envelopes tied together with twine. Inside were his letters and the U.S. dollars he had been sending.

At last, his wife could arrange their passage.

But one daughter remained behind.

She had been disabled by polio, and years would pass before she could join her family. My grandfather had to save enough money to produce a bank savings book that would satisfy the authorities that his daughter would not become a burden on society.

Only then could she make the journey across the Atlantic. She traveled alone.

I never knew my maternal grandfather. He died three months before I was born, and I was named after him.

Yet through the stories passed down in my family, I came to know his determination and his devotion to his family. He never had the opportunity to teach me these principles himself. I learned them from the way he lived.

My paternal grandparents had a different story, one I’ve pieced together from family recollections and conversations sometimes conducted in hushed tones.

My grandmother was a beautiful young woman from a wealthy, religious family. My grandfather came from a working-class family with communist ideas. He was not considered a suitable match.

But they fell in love.

At 16, against their parents’ wishes, they married in secret. Eventually, they left Warsaw for America, clinging to each other, neither speaking a word of English.

They would go on to raise seven children.

I was 8 when my grandfather died and 10 when my grandmother passed away. At those ages, I knew them simply as my grandparents, not as the young people who had defied their families and crossed an ocean together.

Had they remained in Warsaw, they would have faced the Holocaust. I cannot know precisely what would have happened to them, but their decision to leave made possible the lives of generations that followed.

I might never have existed.

As the years have passed, I’ve come to regret the questions I never asked. What did they miss about their homeland? What became of the families they left behind? Did the lives they built in America fulfill the dreams they carried across the ocean?

Those answers are lost to me now.

Today, I think about my 11 grandchildren. They inhabit a world their great-great-grandparents could scarcely have imagined.

What would my grandparents say to them?

Would they speak of the hardships they endured, or the hopes that sustained them? Would they ask what their descendants have done with the opportunities their families struggled to provide?

I wish I knew.

Odd how the stories I’ve been told about my maternal grandfather have begun to feel like memories of my own. I can almost picture the man I never met, determined to bring his family together.

I remember my paternal grandparents, but I wish I knew more about the young people they once were.

And that leads me to wonder what memories we are creating for our own children and grandchildren. What will they remember about the way we lived, the choices we made, and the things we considered important?

Will the example we leave behind reflect the values we hoped to pass along?

There is one memory of my paternal grandmother that has never faded.

On the night she died, she told me not to be afraid. She would always be with me.

I was only 10, but I have carried those words with me ever since.

And I know she is.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.