Finding Life’s Answers

Research is what I do when I don’t know what else to do.

–  Wernher von Braun, Scientist

Until recently, studying my family’s genealogy didn’t ring my bells. Part of that was learned behavior. Early on, we never talked about family. My teacher was my father, Roy, who, (I now know), had four brothers and sisters, but to the best of my memory he never mentioned them, never met with them, and never attended any function with them. That includes, I think, his not going to the funeral for his mother, Carlotta. Although to be fair to him, that last might be incorrect. After all I barely even remember Grandma Carlotta, my being only 7 when she passed, so he could have gone to her service and not told me. But not going would have been more his style; strong and silent, upright and uptight, right up to the point in early 1965 when he took his own life via his .38 Special. (A variation of “Death by Cop”, although that phrase is used differently as well.)

I have been dealing with the impact of his suicide ever since. I was 19 when dad died and still have had barely enough time to shovel through part of the boatload of crap which his selfish act delivered to me. (Although it appears that perhaps I have not worked through all my anger, LOL!) Today my biggest remaining issue seems to be my inability to grieve deeply for him. I know that this inability gets in the way of how much I enjoy life. So, to this day, I work on this, and even this post is another step towards what I hope is my eventual reconciliation with myself, and with his memory.

Working on myself is a big part of why I have now tentatively begun genealogical research into the family – to learn more about dad and what made him who he was. But to my surprise I find that there is an awful lot of other fascinating stuff I didn’t know. For instance, dad’s father, Joao (aka John), was perhaps born in the Azores in Portugal. I thought Joao had already been in California, maybe for a couple of generations or so, but perhaps no. And then he and my grandmother Carlotta split up and he took some number of the kids to Salinas with him, where he apparently worked as a farmer. And another big reveal – because of that re-settlement it appears that my dad had siblings who still lived in Salinas when I lived there with him.

As one example, the records say I had an aunt (my dad’s sister), Gertrude, who was in Salinas until she died in the 1980’s. I find that discovery unsettling. There I was, in Salinas, from the 50s into the 60s, and there Gertrude was, somewhere in town, all that time. I generally like my family members once I’ve got to know them. (There are exceptions.) But whether I liked Gertrude or not I could have gone and hung out with her or cut her grass or groomed her cats or something. Somehow, I feel guilty about not having found out about her earlier, and I think this only scratches the surface of what I don’t know about La Familia, as my son-in-law calls us. There will be more to come on this, I’m sure.

But to my surprise I ALSO found out a good deal of new-to-me stuff about my maternal grandmother, Magna, who immigrated here from Norway. Thanks to my niece Val, (who rocks as a genealogical researcher), we learn that Magna married here twice and had my Beloved Aunt Joy (all-caps title intentional!) by her first husband, who soon thereafter died, and then had my mom, Bliss, by her second husband, Biddleman, who also died a bit later.

But the bigger surprise was finding out something about my own maternal grandfather, this fellow Biddleman. It now appears he may have had another family in the mid-west with perhaps 9 kids (!) and then also married my grandmother in SF and had my mom. Oh…and in the interim got institutionalized for general craziness and murder threats at least once, and wound up as a spiritualist in San Francisco, advertising in the San Francisco Call newspaper that he would provide “Hard Answers!”  for only one dollar! (Granted a dollar in 1900 is now worth about $33 but still that seems like bargain-basement pricing for “hard answers” to me.) Score!

I also have, it seems, an accomplished family. As of today I know them to include opera singers, classical pianists, painters, an FBI agent, policemen and a chief of police, lawyers and district attorneys,  jet fighter pilots and airport managers,  journeymen carpenters and wood workers, career military officers, spiritualists, several professional novelists and writers, one or two very poor poker players, the chief custodian of the Mission Basilica in Carmel, (who also found the misplaced burial site of Father Junipero Serra, of “Lets all persecute the Indians” fame), and at least two judges. The last includes my brother Gail, who  had been an acclaimed district attorney himself before he was given his judgeship.

On the other side of the coin, I also find it’s interesting that we had a few divorces back when divorce wasn’t well-accepted, and many depressives, a couple of suicides, several people clinically anxious, more than a couple of full-on drug and/or alcohol addicts, a possible bigamist and, naturally, ol’ Grandpa Biddleman,  the once-institutionalized full-blown crazy, who was locked up after threatening to murder his wife and children, most likely while under the significant influences of alcohol and opium, bless his troubled little  heart.

Here’s something else I admire. Throughout there does seem to run an overarching desire to accomplish greatly. And, given that several of these folks were first generation immigrants and landed here with nothing, I think they did amazingly well. Plus, since I love stories more than almost anything, having these real characters to draw from suits me to a “T”.

At the risk of over-sharing, if I have any personal issue myself these days (in addition to not feeling grief for my dad), it’s that I have gotten this old and don’t feel that, outside immediate family, I have much relevance. So now what’s very comforting about doing genealogy work is that it highlights how almost everyone else suffered with similar struggles, if not worse. However, it’s one thing to sort of “know” that we are all in the same, very leaky boat. It’s another altogether to track down and plug the leaks so you can study the boat a bit. Which is where genealogy may prove useful, of course.

For instance, my dad may have taken his own life because of a combination of intense and continuous pain from several unsuccessful back operations, which in turn contributed to his depression and perhaps his feeling that he’d never again be the man he was. Or maybe it was his wondering why he hadn’t accomplished even more. Some of this I knew from the small personal history I’d gleaned, but some of this came from research. And it paints a vivid picture. I mean, here’s a guy who survived the Great Depression working as a laborer and a…gasp….car salesman, (a horrible fit!), and not only survived but made it from  unskilled worker to journeyman carpenter, then to police officer, police chief and FBI Special Agent! But clearly when you’re depressed you don’t see anything you do as of much significance, do you? At least in my own case, when depressed I usually can’t.

Of course, even having done a little research I can’t pretend to know the real facts, but it seems the above semi-educated guesses would be likely things for my dad to feel and eventually act on.  And, for me, just believing that about him, his actions make more sense and I feel a bit better.

In my research thus far, everybody I’ve studied had their life dissatisfactions, which often were obvious. For instance, at the extreme, I have to think Biddleman was majorly dissatisfied to have landed in the looney bin, assuming he knew where he was. And my dad was surely dissatisfied with his temporary role as a car salesman, given his taciturn nature. But sometimes dissatisfactions aren’t as obvious, and I have come to think that mostly we simply learn to live with them. I am certainly dissatisfied with myself but don’t normally talk about those dissatisfactions, unless you make the mistake of asking, of course.

This doesn’t mean that dissatisfactions rule and there’s no way out, no hope for me, or for us. There are exceptions to this rule. In my life, Irene is one. She can start the day with a good sunrise and that happiness can keep her moving for hours; I’ve seen it myself.

But she’s not the only one. I also have a family member who convinced me when she said recently that she is quite satisfied with her own life and, more, that she mostly always has been.  Now in her fourth quarter, her past accomplishments are considerable. For instance, she has started and run her own businesses, raised four terrific kids (now amazing adults), dealt gracefully with a most difficult spouse and buried a second, birdwatched all around the world, lived abroad and learned languages, and wrote and published two novels, the last when she was in her 80s. And now she has returned to Carmel and lives peacefully in the bosom of her family. And she doesn’t look back, or even forward.  She says she can see all of life rolling on each day, even in the acts of an individual baby sparrow. And so she gladly sits through much of the day and watches her bird feeder and says to herself “This is just how life is supposed to be.” And she seems, bless her heart, to believe every word.

One example, for me, can be worth a thousand words and a few hundred hours of therapy. So my having two examples means there’s hope. I actually believe there’s lots of hope for us all; we simply need to find where to look.