Today I received a package from Ireland,
It was the medical record of my great grandmother from Grangegorman Mental Hospital near Dublin. We requested them months ago after discovering (through birth and death records in Dublin) that she hadn't died in 1939 as we had thought at age 37, she actually died in 1994, at age 91. For five years of my life I had a great grandmother I never knew existed. We know that she spent the last 10 years of her life in a care home in Bray, the same place I walked with my parents when I was 4 years old. I must have walked feet away from this seemingly unremarkable old lady who was, unbeknownst to me, my great grandmother. We also received a photograph of her. She suffered from psychotic depression, which was largely not understood at the time. She looks so lost and afraid in the photograph. From the package we received it seems she was discharged from Grangegorman in 1940, but we don't know where to. We have no idea where she was between 1940 and 1984. Just looking at that photograph of her makes me so sorry that she died with a daughter she never saw again after 1939, a granddaughter she never knew, and a great grandson to boot.
I look at that photograph and feel so sorry in so many ways. I want to make sure that her family never forgets her. She's been forgotten too long. The kindness in her eyes is haunting, she didn't deserve what happened to her. She was just the same as me, but the time she lived in ultimately destroyed her. She won't be forgotten as long as I live, I am who I am because she lived. I just wish she were still around to know how much I owe her and how sorry I feel that she suffered so much. After all, to be forgotten is worse than death. Thankfully I've seen her face and know a part of her story, now I can find out the rest and make sure that her life wasn't in vain. She will be remembered, if just by a photograph and her story. She's not lost to time any more, she has a place in an ongoing story, and I intend to ensure that her place is never lost to time again.
