Another Mother's Prayer

Here's a prequel of sorts to yesterday's post about my mother's lifelong prayer: I'll tell you the story of how my grandmother lost two of her children to the Second World War, but not in the way she (or anyone) expected.

My mother grew up on a farm with eight brothers and sisters, one of whom died as a baby. When she was eight years old, her father died of pneumonia. My grandmother had to leave them all to work at the nearby whiskey distillery, and you can imagine the stories my mother later told about what her four older brothers got up to unsupervised, after that.

Six years of Depression passed then, and by that I only mean the economic climate. I can't imagine the state of my grandmother's mind and soul at such a time, or how she depended on those eldest sons who looked so much like their Daddy.

You've heard the expression "out of the frying pan and into the fire"? My grandmother's fire was the Second World War. Her four oldest boys all signed up, including "Slim" who'd always looked after my mother as she was the next youngest to him: he had to lie about his age at the recruitment office. They'd all been given a choice to be deployed separately or together, because what family wants all their kids wiped out at once?

"Please tell me," my Grandmother said when they broke the news, "that you're not going together."

Well, duh. They were brothers, weren't they? All for one and one for all--of course they went together. When I was young and first heard this story, I thought they were wonderfully loyal and brave. Now, with kids of my own, my heart nearly stops when I think of how my poor Grandmother endured that day...or the ones following while they prepared to go. And worse, the years they spent away in France, England, Belgium, and Germany, leaving herself and her remaining children to wait for their letters, and pray for their safe return.

My mother kept those letters and telegrams all her life. Just once, she told me of the joy of receiving them, to know the brother who sent it was still alive. At the same time there was terror: what would it say? Would it tell of another's death, of life-changing injury, of horrors? Then as she finished each letter and folded it away, was the sorrow of missing all four of them.

Of course, behind all those feelings lay the knowledge that days or even weeks had passed since the letter had been written, and that in war a single moment can change everything.

Every day, my mother said, her mother prayed for her four boy soldiers to return home safely to her. Every day, she reminded her remaining children, three girls and a boy, to write to their brothers and tell them they loved them. Tell them news from home. Tell them how you're doing in school. Tell them how proud you are of them. Tell them to write soon.

They did, and their brothers loved the letters. So did their new friend Jim, who didn't get letters very often and so asked to share theirs, and soon felt as if he knew the whole family. "Write to our friend," one of the brothers wrote home, and the girls did. My mother's oldest sister, tall and beautiful and as charmingly talkative as anyone I've ever met, promised to keep the poor stranger supplied with cheerful news.

Meanwhile, my grandmother had enough worries at home. Her youngest daughter always had breathing troubles, and my mother could remember sitting up nights with her during those years, rubbing her back to help clear her lungs. Years later, when a doctor told that youngest sister that she wouldn't live long enough to see her baby daughter grow up, she told him he was wrong: and then proved him wrong, just barely, dying when her daughter turned eighteen. But that's another story.

That little aunt who could hardly breathe was the youngest. Next oldest was the only boy left at home, my mother's favourite for being next to her in age and "sweet as could be", as anyone in the family would tell you. About this time, he started getting headaches, and well, who'd be surprised? At thirteen he was suddenly man of the house, his brothers were in danger, his youngest sister suffering, his other two sisters gone to work in a factory to help make ends meet, and his poor mother very likely going demented with it all.

With all that around him, I imagine he didn't complain until the headaches were too bad to hide. They'd later become unbearable, and then he died with brain tumours.

When they buried him, my grandmother couldn't afford a stone for his grave. Fifty years passed until I saved the money to put one there, a gift to my mother who still spoke of him often, and then I hated myself for making her cry.

That's the first ending to this story; the first child lost. The second ending is happier.

The four fighting brothers and their friend Jim survived the war, not a scratch on them that showed to the outside world. My grandmother and her girls went to meet them, and so the brothers had two sisters to hug and give European presents to.

Only two sisters, because the oldest was already in Jim's arms, and soon after that he took her far far away to live happily ever after and raise handsome boys of their own. True story.

At my mother's funeral, one of those handsome boys whom I'd never met walked up to me and said kindly, "You don't know me, but..."

"Of course I know you, Freddie," I said, "because we've got the same birthday, you and I."

"We do?" He laughed, and looking back I realise that my reply made no sense at all, even though it's true. But people rarely make sense at funerals, in my experience.

Anyhow, that's how my grandmother lost two children to the second World War, even though her prayer came true. Now you know why my mother did such a good job of choosing her prayer, and why I'm having such a hard time choosing mine.

Because, as I said yesterday, you may well get what you asked for.




Above, my uncle riding a motorcycle in Germany in a photo he sent home to my grandmother. This post has been begging me to write it since I commented on PJ Lynch's beautiful painting of a soldier "Home from the Front".