This is a story of my grandparents, Emil and Antonia. They were first generation Australians. Their own parents had sailed to a new life in Australia as children from Germany. Emil was from a Lutheran family and Antonia was from a Catholic family and so were forbidden to marry by the parents of my grandfather. They relented only when Antonia became pregnant.
They married and lived on the property that belonged to Grandfather's family. His own father had died so as the youngest who had not yet made a life for himself he had stayed to run the family farm. His mother considered herself the boss though.Great-grandmother spoke mainly German and kept a photo of the Kaiser on her bedroom wall. Family history is that she was always very hard on Antonia, but that Emil always took his wife's side...most of the time, anyway.
Their first born child was a boy. When he was two years old, their second child, a daughter was born. It was not until after this story that their third child, my mother was born. The boy would follow his grandmother about the farm as she fed the animals and did her daily chores. Emil had a retired race horse grazing on the farm that was very frisky and somewhat wild which few could ride. Emil himself only rode it once or twice a year. This horse was down amongst the dairy cows where the boy went often with his grandmother. Antonia asked her mother-in-law on many occasions not to take the child in amongst the animals but the older woman thought she knew better.
One day the boy was in the dairy yard with the animals and Emil's little dog came into the yard too. The dog was Emil's special pet and went everywhere with him. The dog ran amongst the animals and spooked the horse, which reared and its hoof struck the boy child in the head.
The year was 1922. They took the child to the doctor in the nearest town, which was a very small village in those days. He appeared to be alright and they took him home, but as the days wore on the child became sicker. Eventually they took him back to the doctor who was of the opinion that an abscess must had formed inside the child's head. In 1922 in small rural areas of Australia medical care was very rudimentary. The doctor advised that they should take the child to a hospital about 90 minutes train ride from their small town. Grandmother could not go as she had a small baby, my aunt.
So my Grandfather made the long train journey to the hospital with his small son....but it was all to no avail. The little boy died shortly afterwards and so he made the return journey with a small coffin.
Grandmother apparently never spoke of the pain and sorrow she felt, and went on with her everyday life. She did want to get rid of the horse, but Grandfather refused and kept the animal for years. It must have pained her everytime she saw that animal, even though it was not its fault. They were stoic German people and got on with life.
A year or so later Grandfather went to town one day, and when he came home...he found that his dog was dead. My grandmother had taken an axe and killed the dog. Its body was in fact scattered across the house yard, She had reached her breaking point. Her grief had burst forth like a torrent.
Grandmother never mentioned her son. It was only in the last few years of her life, before her death at the age of 95 that she said anything about him. My mother learned the story from her own aunt, my grandfather's sister. Grandmother always kept a small black and white photo of him, in a silver frame, on the sideboard in the dining room. I knew who it was because my mother told me, but we did not ask questions.
In time Grandmother had to care for her mother-in-law as senility overtook her. The woman who was the cause of her son's death. Grandmother went on to give birth to 11 children in all. 8 Girls and 3 boys. The last of the 11 was a girl, born when Grandmother was in her 40s and she died at birth. She is buried with her brother. My Grandfather died in 1965, and he became a Catholic just before his death...I think it was his final gift to his wife.
My mother suspects that the marriage of her parents was never a happy one after that sad day. It was as though a light went out in her mother, and the sadness and the fear that the tragedy brought to the family impounded the lives of the children that were born long after the event. My mother has many fears, as do her siblings, and I do think they absorbed the tragedy from the sadness of their parents. My mother said that her father would 'sulk" for weeks on end - he would speak to the children but not to my Grandmother. From the description my mother gives, I don't think he was sulking I think he suffered from severe depression. She says he always "suffered from nerves" too. I think my grandparents internalised their pain and lost each other along the way.
My granmother died in 2000 and I gave the eulogy at her funeral. It was the proudest moment of my life to honor that woman. As I spoke with the parish priest before the service he told me that he had checked the church records and we were farewelling my Grandmother on her wedding anniversary. She had been married in the very same church all those years ago and now we were saying goodbye to her on the same date...
The sadness of this tragedy is within the family to this day. It has created anxious, and fearful people, frightened of the world, and with a strong need to control. It has gone form gerneration to generation, and I think it is only now, that the great-grandchildren are growing into adults that the shadow of sadness is lifting.
I don't know why I am telling you this story. I have no lesson to share, no moral to impart. It is just that over the last few weeks it has been haunting me. The sadness and the pain that my Grandmother and Grandfather must have suffered must have been horrendous. I don't think that I could have survivied it. It is the thought of my Grandmother's pain and how alone she must have felt that hurts me and haunts my thoughts and I can't shake it. It is silly, to be involved with an event that happened so many years ago, and for which all the participants are dead...Maybe telling the story to others will free me of it too.
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