Family Mystery: Searching For My Unknown Great-grandfather
Who was my grandmother's unknown father? Family secrets and a burning question that has been whispered throughout my youth: just who was my paternal grandmother's father? That my grandmother was illegitimate was one of those open secrets in the family that no one talked about. I'm not certain that even she knew who her father was. But like a stone being thrown into a pond -- whatever the intent was in keeping it quiet -- the waves that the secret created has had a real impact on her children and grandchildren. I personally feel a sense of loss of family connection and history, a sense of being robbed of something that can never be fully reclaimed. My uncle, aunt, and father never got to know their grandfather and they grew up thinking their grandmother was their "aunt"; we grandchildren (my brother and paternal cousins) were robbed of knowing our great-grandfather and of having anything but a distant-aunt relationship with our great-grandmother. The unfairness ...