GHOSTS OF A DIFFERENT KIND!

GHOSTS OF A DIFFERENT KIND

Many people have lost a parent or grandparent, and those who have and who are sitting reading this, will probably relate. For those who haven't had to face this loss yet, then please read this and act on it. Don't leave it until too late.

How often do we take life for granted? Our parents will always be there, even when they get sick with cancer, old age or even a sudden accident … it will never be today that they will be lost to us, it will be another day. And because it will be another day, we put off asking important questions, because we are far too busy today. Asking who they really were in life. What were their life's experiences? They have lived through so many historic events and changes, and yet we always feel that we have plenty of time to sit down with them and find out what these were. Sadly, time runs out for most of us, and we are left with nothing but unanswered questions at the end of it. And it isn't until they leave us, and you are going through their life's collection of bits that you suddenly realise, you didn't know this person… not really. There was more to this person then just a father, or mother and you never took the time to know them properly as anything but. As you sit sorting through their items and you start to wander through their lives you realise they had another life prior to you.

Why have I brought this particular subject up in a blog? Where am I going with this?

Well, over 5 years ago, I received a call here in Australia, to say my dad had died back in the UK. It was a surreal feeling to say the least. I knew he had cancer and was in hospital, but for some reason I always felt I had time to get back there and see him one last time. Next week.. next week… well you know how it is. Now before you are thinking… Awwww, this is not what the blog is meant to be about. Because of what I do, I was totally at peace with his death, although heartbroken I wouldn't see him again. I knew he was ok and I coped well. Nope, I am going somewhere else with this blog as I need some advice.

Because of the shortness of my visit, my sister and myself had to sort out his belongings fairly quickly. We had a LOT of strange things happen that day, but those are for another time. In a nutshell I ended up with all his WWII memorabilia and she with the family history.

Upon returning home, I had more time to look through his belongings. It was then that it hit me; I really didn't know this man. As I looked through the photos he had taken after his landing on the D-day beaches, through war torn France and Belgium, I wondered who this handsome young man I was looking at really had been. There he was with his mates smiling at the camera back in the 1940s. What had he seen, experienced, felt?? Who were these overseas ladies that had sent this young man love letters and that he had kept all those years since the war?? Are they still alive?? They were pretty, as the photos he had also kept showed. Why had he kept an insignia off a German uniform that still bore the brown of blood staining after all these years? My sister once stated to him 'I could never shoot somebody else' to which he quietly replied, 'Sometimes when somebody is shooting at you, you'd be suprised' and left it at that.

But the biggest unanswered question of all, the one that still haunts me… who was the young German soldier in the small photo my father had kept safe all those years?

Was this soldier still alive now? Was he just a prisoner at the time? Or was it worse?

So, two reasons for this blog….

1) Does anybody know a way of tracing somebody, just from a WWII photograph???

2) And the moral of this story.

Parents are people long before they settle down and have children. I know, I am one. It is sometimes only when it is too late, that we wished we had asked more questions and found out more about them. There is much my kids don't know about me, I am just good old mum. One day I hope they will ask, and even if they don't maybe I will write it down for them, so that when it comes to their turn to wander through my life's collection, their questions will be answered fully on who I was.

Don't live with ghosts from somebody else's past…. Ask now before it is too late. Alternatively, don't leave somebody with your ghosts, talk to your children/Grandchildren, tell them who you were then and are now. They may not want to listen at this stage, but they will hear and remember and when you are gone, they won't feel the regret at not having asked.