Week 1: I'd Like to Meet... #52Ancestorsin52weeks

There’s probably not a day goes by, when I don’t think about my late parents. My dad, John McAra died in 1984, when I was just 27. Fortunately, I had my mum with me a lot longer. Helen Young Anderson, died in 2003 at the age of 88. Most people I’m sure can relate to the “Oh I wish Mum/Dad were still here so I could tell/show them this”, “ If only Mum and Dad could have met their grandchildren”, “ I wonder what Mum/Dad would have thought of this.” These are things which have occurred since their deaths and we will never know what they would have thought. They simply weren’t here to voice their thoughts. But while they were here, while they were alive, they could have voiced their opinions, they could have answered my questions, they could have told me stories. But, like many ‘children’, I never asked them.

So I’d like to meet my Mum and Dad.

And let’s imagine I have a limited amount of questions I can ask. These questions have to be about things they actually experienced or people they knew. No asking them what they think of Elon Musk.

So what would I like to know?

I’d certainly like to know more about their parents. I never knew either grandfather. I was four when my dad’s mum died and six when my mum’s mum died. I vaguely remember my mum’s mum, but of my dad’s mum, nothing.

My dad was the youngest of 12 children. His mum, Christina Walker, was 46 and his dad, John McAra, was 50 when he was born. The family photo below shows the family – my dad is the baby. What must it have been like for my dad to grow up with ‘old’ parents and eight older siblings? (Three had died a decade before my dad was born.)

My dad never spoke about his childhood or his parents. What sort of a relationship did he have with them?

He never knew his grandparents. Did he know his many cousins?? I can only remember ever meeting one of them.

I’d like to ask my mum similar questions. Her dad, John Anderson, was 40 when she was born and her mum, Margaret Adams, was 30. Mum had been a bit more forthcoming in the earlier days of my family tree research telling me that her elder sister was looked after by her grandmother. Indeed, my aunt Meg was 6 and my grandmother pregnant with my mum before my grandparents got married. Did my mum know why? Was there some sort of disapproval to my grandparents marriage? It’s not as though Margaret Adams was a teenage mother.

And what of my parent’s themselves?  How and where did they meet?  What did they do for fun? Had they known each other long before they got married in 1940?

What was their ‘worst’ experience during the war? My dad being a civil engineer was in a reserved profession, so did not ‘go to war’, but was part of the Home Guard.

I believe my mum gave up work after she was married and she remained a housewife all her life. The large age gap between my sister and I basically meant she had a child at home between 1944 -1979! Did she have any regrets about being a stay at home mum?

 I will never get an answer to these questions.

If you still have questions to ask, ask them before your time runs out.