You are not forgotten…you are never forgotten

I was going to wait to tell this story until we’d delved into some of the more hands-on aspects of ancestral work. But, for reasons that should become clear in the coming weeks, I’ve been told the time is now…

As the sun began to hang low over the city and dip down beneath the hat of Billy Penn, the young couple made their final farewells to family. Seven months heavy with her first child, Beatrice knew that this would most likely be the last time she saw her parents and her four younger siblings—her whole world until mere months ago—before her own child was born. She knew this new job in Harrisburg was an eagerly-awaited stepping stone for her newlywed husband, but she secretly wished it could have waited until after the new arrival, excited but fearful of what motherhood would bring–everything was changing so fast. She clung to her mother and held her for what felt like centuries, but wasn’t nearly long enough. Her best friend and once strong matron of this joyful family felt so surprisingly frail and fragile, so very ill these past months. Beatrice prayed her mother would live to hold her first grandchild. 

As their tan Model-T made its way out of the endless one-way streets of Philadelphia, the rain began to fall on the boxy windshield. “I knew we should have hit the road earlier,” Walter grumbled fretfully, as he started up the wipers. “I’m sorry,” she offered, her voice weak and her heart still heavy with worry and wistful goodbyes, “it’s just so hard to leave.” He looked over at his doe-eyed glowing golden bride and his angst softened. “I know.” He said, placing his hand on the soft cotton print of her maternity gown and giving her shoulder a quick squeeze. 

The next thing Beatrice knew, she woke in a hospital bed, the baby gone from her belly. She cried out in panic for a nurse who came running. Somewhere on the slippery roads outside Harrisburg, Walter had lost control of the car and careened off the road. Was it his fault? Another’s negligence? Simply a painful twist of fate? I don’t know. Did she ever hold her tiny, premature baby? Did she ever kiss his cheek and cry at the miracle of his many tiny fingers and toes? I don’t know.What I do know is that she was conscious long enough to give him a name—Walter Jr., after his father. Walter Jr. was born on August 17, 1938. 3 days later, Beatrice slipped from this world and took all hope with her. 

Walter Sr. wanted nothing to do with the boy—the small, screaming creature that had killed his beautiful bride—this crying infant for whom he had no idea how to care. He moved back to Philly—back in with his father and sister, who cared for the baby while he worked. As the months and years passed, he spent less and less time there, sometimes traveling for his job with the state, sometimes just vanishing without notice for days or weeks on end. When the boy was just 6, his father announced that he was getting married—he’d met someone new and was beginning a brand new life—without his son. The boy cried himself to sleep every night for a month, but never showed the tears in front of his father. After the wedding, Walter Sr. moved to a new home with his new bride and, not long after, their new baby girl. The boy saw them around the neighborhood—the proud parents pushing their angel around town in a lace-trimmed pram. And he wondered every single day what was so wrong with him that his own father could not love him. When the new arrival was just two, Walter Sr. packed up her and her mother in the long white Chevy and drove to California to find his fortune. They never looked back, and the boy never saw or heard from his father again. Did he even say goodbye? I don’t know. But somehow I doubt it. 

I often think of how sad Beatrice must have been, looking down on her baby boy suffering and wondering how her own true love could be so cold to him—how he could have gone so far astray.

The father and sister—Stella—were already livid when Walter Sr. remarried and shunned his own son. But the total abandonment not only of the boy, but of them, as well, providing no more financial support for raising him, sent them into paroxysms of fury and resentment. They were poor and struggling and now completely alone. In their anger, they cut ties with everyone—Walter Sr., had he ever bothered to reach out; his older brother who had headed out to California before him; and all of Beatrice’s family, who had been mostly blocked from the boy’s life, but had been allowed occasional visits up to that point. They destroyed all evidence that this child ever had any family other than them, and the boy grew up in Stella’s care, the only mother he’d ever known. 

I am the only child of Walter J. Sullivan Jr. I have spent 37 years pining for the grandmother I never knew. I never even had any idea she existed until I was 9 and Grandmom—Stella—succumbed to breast cancer. Only then did I discover that she was not my father’s mother and a forgotten woman named Beatrice lay beneath the dirt, beside her. For 37 years I have been dreaming what she looked like, sounded like—if I look like her. 

I am a very good genealogist. A needle in a haystack tenacious bloodhound of a genealogist. But nothing seems to remain to illustrate that Beatrice Nelson Sullivan ever existed, save a few lines on the census, a death certificate, and a scanty 2-line obit. I’ve turned over every stone, only to find an empty hole where her life should be. I don’t even have a photo of her. 

This past June, I attended a narrative medicine workshop (aka writing as healing), as I do at least a couple of times a year. On the last night of this retreat, the homework assignment was to write a timed piece using the prompt “wedding bands.” In the months prior, the longing to know my missing grandmother had swelled into an oppressive weight. The intolerable anger that no one seemed to have cared enough to even remember she existed burned through my days. She didn’t even have a headstone and lay in an unmarked grave until I took matters into my own hands to honor her in 2017.

I knew I wanted to write about her, but the words never came. I stared at the page and spoke to the air around me—spoke to her–and the anguish wrung me out as I cried for her, for me, for how things could have been if that Model-T had only made it 15 minutes more to home. I cried myself to sleep and drifted off with only one line written: 

I have nothing of my grandmother. 

A cacophony of birds swirling around my tent woke me, and I realized the time. I looked at the journal still sitting by my hand and the words that had been brewing and roiling all night in my semi-sleeping brain poured out in a wave, until the piece was done. I dashed to the bath house for my shower and back, threw my towel over the impromptu clothesline strung between the trees, turned, and found myself face to face with an enormous doe—the largest I’d ever seen. She stood just a couple feet in front of me with great fluttering ears and huge, dark, gentle eyes. “Well, hello” I said, startled, “Good Morning.” She peered at me for a long moment, then bowed down low to me on bended knee, nose to the ground, and looked back up. My mouth dropped, and I followed suit. I began to talk to her, tell her about my story, my grandmother, about everything. She listened contentedly and never moved except to crane her neck over and grab the occasional leaf from the saplings that surrounded us. We spoke for ages, until I finally had to break away and prepare for the day. I told her I had to go, and peacefully she wandered off into the woods. 

I ran across campus and miraculously made it to class, just in the nick of time. We went around the circle, each person reading their final piece. The woman next to me finished and as she received the comments and feedback from her peers, I caught something out of the corner of my eye—it was her. The giant doe was staring in at the side window, just watching. It was my turn, and as I lifted my journal to begin, she moved to the window directly behind me and leaned in, listening. She stayed still for the whole piece. As soon as I finished, she wandered off into the woods again.

After class, I broke down camp and my husband had arrived to transport my gear and I home. As we left the campsite, I stopped and spoke to the trees and the sky. “If this is all really real—if this is really you and this is really happening, please let me see you one last time before I leave.” We dragged the gear to the car, up by the road, and as he hauled it in the trunk, she emerged from the brush and stood between us, nonchalantly, unafraid and unhurried. We spoke. I thanked her. And as soon as all the gear was loaded, she looked at me deeply, one last time, with giant, gentle eyes and wandered off into the underbrush. 

Once home, I returned to daily life and the mountains of work that awaited me. My first day back, my daughter came running down the stairs—“a deer!” She cried. We know we have plenty in the woods around us, but they are remarkably shy and skittish and rarely get close enough to the house to be seen in the daylight. I looked out and sure enough—an enormous doe was peacefully munching on leaves, right next to the house. I watched, afraid to spook her. She came every day for a week, always as close to the house as she could get. I became braver, spoke to her, got closer, and she never batted an eye. Instead of bolting, she nestled down in the garden, took a rest, and made herself at home. Every day for a week she spent hours as close as she could get to us. And then she was gone. 

To be continued…