History is bunk
By M on Saturday 13 January 2007, 21:21 - Journal - Permalink
If you want to get our parents animated, it is pretty easy: show mum some
children, and bring up the war with dad. It couldn't be simpler.
When we were little we used to love hearing dad's war stories. but after the fiftieth telling we began to lose interest. More recently, with a better grasp of history, a deeper understanding of just why the war has such enduring importance for dad, and a curiosity about family genealogy, my interest has returned. In particular, over the last few months I have been helping to reconstruct dad's torpedoing story, using the Internet to find several new sources, all supplying pieces of a jigsaw that never quite fits. People's memories become distorted, documents contain errors, and ambiguities are a constant in any form of research. Dad has really enjoyed this process of rediscovery and the sifting through of evidence. He has been constantly asking me if I have uncovered anything new, or heard from the contacts I've made in pursuit of the story. There has been a nice congruence of interests - and we have both got something out of it.
The trouble is, or rather, the troubles are, that dad is an unreliable and defensive witness. The unreliability is something I think I can handle. If I cannot get a straight answer to a question, or I get one I strongly suspect is wrong, I simply ask the question again a few days later. Some of what dad tells me leads to new information, some of it doesn't.
It is his defensiveness that makes things difficult. I called dad today to ask some very specific questions, questions that were intended to elicit details which would tell me where dad had been during the torpedoing. Here are some examples:
I had to give up in the end. Researching his wartime experience seems to have become just another of those activities that works for a while and then fails to deliver any benefit. I've been getting satisfaction out of this research, but I am a bit stung by the absence of dad's gratitude. It has really turned me off the whole thing.
When we were little we used to love hearing dad's war stories. but after the fiftieth telling we began to lose interest. More recently, with a better grasp of history, a deeper understanding of just why the war has such enduring importance for dad, and a curiosity about family genealogy, my interest has returned. In particular, over the last few months I have been helping to reconstruct dad's torpedoing story, using the Internet to find several new sources, all supplying pieces of a jigsaw that never quite fits. People's memories become distorted, documents contain errors, and ambiguities are a constant in any form of research. Dad has really enjoyed this process of rediscovery and the sifting through of evidence. He has been constantly asking me if I have uncovered anything new, or heard from the contacts I've made in pursuit of the story. There has been a nice congruence of interests - and we have both got something out of it.
The trouble is, or rather, the troubles are, that dad is an unreliable and defensive witness. The unreliability is something I think I can handle. If I cannot get a straight answer to a question, or I get one I strongly suspect is wrong, I simply ask the question again a few days later. Some of what dad tells me leads to new information, some of it doesn't.
It is his defensiveness that makes things difficult. I called dad today to ask some very specific questions, questions that were intended to elicit details which would tell me where dad had been during the torpedoing. Here are some examples:
- Did you see your lifeboat being launched? (if he had answered 'yes' I would then have asked if one of the davits had failed)
- Did the men in your lifeboat jerry rig a sail out of two oars and a tarpaulin?
- Did some men in your lifeboat have no boots?
I had to give up in the end. Researching his wartime experience seems to have become just another of those activities that works for a while and then fails to deliver any benefit. I've been getting satisfaction out of this research, but I am a bit stung by the absence of dad's gratitude. It has really turned me off the whole thing.
Comments
Oh man, that lack of gratitude is one of the hardest things about this (and even worse because you KNOW you shouldn't care about gratitude, but you still do anyway).
A couple years ago my mother was in the hospital at death's door for six months. I visited her six days a week during the entire stay. She has no memory of my visits. (I realized this when one day she expressed surprise that I knew the way to the hospital.) I find this infuriating, and just one example of the many ways my parents constantly show their total oblivion of what this care-giving is doing to my life.
The problem is that being annoyed by this makes me feel like a petulant child. Why can't I grow up and act like a responsible adult. Actually, most of the time I do ACT like one, but the feelings are another thing.
I'm still reading as I comment, by the way. I wanted to record this one before I forget: Isn't it interesting that, while your Dad's memory of his experiences is muddled, his memory that you are researching something of importance to him is stellar. Good example of failing short term memory versus tricky short term memory.
I'm thinking, as I finish this post, that a curious aspect of dementia and memory is that, although pulling memories out of one's brain soup is clearly treacherous when one suffers from elderly dementia, the brain continues to try to do this, despite the results. Perhaps this is why your dad appears to be ungrateful and says things that imply that your research isn't important. I think it's possible that he is simply getting caught in a mental catch-22 which will no longer allow him to step back and view your efforts from a perspective less personal to him. It's probably exhausting for him to get caught in these mental circles of inconsequence...and the only way out may be for him to leave the site, temporarily.
It's funny, too, that you mention your dad's lack of gratitude. This is one of the harder caregiver situations to deal with. Although I know you hate self-referentiality, I'm thinking something I wrote a little over a year ago might hmmm...help? Probably not, and you may have already read this, but, it bears repeating, I think:
http://themomandmejournals.net/essa...