Categories: uncategorized
Date: 07 September 2007 07:36:48
I have to admit that I am the sort to reach for the remote rather than watch particularly moving or disturbing tv, but last night I sat on my sofa and sobbed as I watched the tv screen. The Telegraph gives the background to last night's Who Do You Think You Are?, where Natasha Kaplinsky went exploring her family tree.
At first I was crying as the realisation of what the holocaust meant on a micro level hit, but then I realised the tears were flowing for a deeper reason which was relevent for everybody. The program by its nature deals with loss and silence it underlines the fact that we all have many unanswered questions within our families - things we want to know about but don't ask about and as families don't talk about. I think that's probably one of the reasons for the surge in people researching their family trees over recent years.
As the tears continued to fall after the programme finished and I stumbled off to bed I realised I'd gone from crying over a moving tv program dealing with a culture and history very different to my own to weeping over all the questions I didn't ask but things I wanted to know from my mum. I was crying over my total lack of knowledge about the people in the photographs which I'd first seen at her funeral which showed her family. I was crying about the fact I knew only the briefest fragments about my great-grandfather, a man my mum talked about with a fondness and whom I believe my non-conformist faith has flowed from, (in those moments when I romanticise about generational blessings), but I'd never bothered to ask the right questions about. I was crying because I know that despite the longing to know the answers I know in the long run it is probably easier and better to let it all be and just let the questions fade into the background, only re-emerging from time to time.