Family drama (from previous generations)

November 2nd

As always on All Soul’s Day, I and my family went to the cemeteries to visit the graves of our loved ones. And as always we met some other family members that we usually see once a year. And as always there was a lot of discussion about those from previous generations who died. And as always I found out more and more family secrets or dramas that took place many years ago:

• A great aunt who was a lesbian and lived with a woman — in the XIX century!
• A great uncle who was engaged to a local girl (and got her pregnant) and then broke off the engagement and eloped with her sister! Leaving this poor girl in shame with a child! It was a huge scandal and parts of our family were ostracized from the local community in the early XX century.
• Three cousins who mysteriously died at the beginning of the XX century — officially from botulism from some unsafe meat (which is probable) but unofficially were poisoned with strychnine by a local guy who was spurned by one of them and rejected from getting engaged!
• Possibly there was some light inbreeding in my family — we met a woman in the cemetery yesterday who is both my maternal and paternal third cousin! What is going on? But I was assured that this matter was analyzed by others in my family and it only looks bad, in reality, those liaisons years ago were between far-removed blood relatives.
• There was a suicide brought by gambling debts and embezzlement right after the First World War!
• Unfortunately, alcoholism was rampant among men in my family going many generations back…

All that made me realize that I don’t know many details about the lives of my family from previous generations. So finding out more about that will be my small project for this winter. My mom already has a rough draft of our family tree. She will go over it making adjustments and then I will follow with notes about particular individuals and their stories. Hopefully, I will be able to form a coherent narrative and of course, I will share scandalous details here as I go along.