By Dawn Story Burke
[Editor’s Note: My niece wrote this compassionate essay for our Thor’s Day column a bit over ten years ago, on April 4, 2013, and its subject matter seemed pertinent to this Easter time of our current year.]
Last week, I got to emailing with an aunt, an uncle, and a cousin about going to church on Easter. Or, more specifically, about going to church without one’s spouse.
My uncle recalled that his father (my grandfather)
rarely went to church...There seemed to be a great deal of animosity between my father’s mother and my mother, who told me about my grandma’s shaking a finger at her and saying in a shrill, hateful voice, “You ain’t nothing but a holiness!’”—that is, one of those kooky Holy Rollers...At any rate, my father seemed reluctant to go to church. He gave the impression of not believing any of that “religion stuff.”My aunt confirmed that there was animosity between the two women:
Mama really despised Grandma when she was having one of her angry spells....Mama said Grandma did not want Jeff to marry a Holiness person, and told Mama so. That is why Mama would not be called Grandma, but wanted to be called Mama Stella.This reminded me of what I think is true: people don’t start out choosing their religion; their parents choose it for them.
My aunt also said that
I quit the Catholic church cause Ray wouldn’t get out of bed and help me get the kids ready. I started going to Protestant churches again, all by myself with the kids.And that reminded my cousin, who is now married to a man who attends church with her, that she too “went faithfully by myself and sons for most of my 15-year marriage to Doug [her first husband]. So it is very nice now to have a husband that goes with me.”
I have gone to church alone in the past myself; Roger will not go to any church. And who knows? I may go alone again; we have several to choose from.
It’s a shame about Mama Stella and Great Grandma’s feelings towards each other. Mom has told me about it too, so feelings must have been very strong. It had to have made for a great strain on their relationship.
Religion, Christianity, etc. shouldn’t do that to families, but it happens all too often. No one is ever going to agree on everything and if someone loves someone then they need to love them and go on and not judge them.
| Copyright © 2013, 2023 by Dawn Burke |
Thank you then, Dawn Stella, and thank you now again for these touching reflections. Let’s collaborate on a poem of remembrance of Jeff’s mother, who had her own burdens, worries, trials, losses. Effie Dickey Dean, was, after all, the other of my two grandmothers, of your two great-grandmothers. (Or do we have four great-grandmothers? Family trees have always confused me.)
ReplyDeleteI checked; we do have four great-grandmothers (and four great-grandfathers). From the July 2, 2006 article, “We all have the same ancestors, researchers say,” on NBC News:
Delete“Every person has two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. Keep doubling back through the generations — 16, 32, 64, 128 — and within a few hundred years you have thousands of ancestors.”