https://www.lynchandsonsclawson.com/obituaries/Maurice-Joseph-Lefford-Md?obId=29489916
Did I tell you this before? Maurice was in my writing group and he was working on a story about being one of the many children sent away to live in the countryside during the bombing of London during the war. He had made his way home at age 11, (after 3 years) knocked at the door and was greeted by his mother with the words. "Well, you'll be going back on the next train." He said he never recovered from these words.
Well, I was glad to read his obituary and attend a funeral lunch for him and find out he had a very successful career and a family of his own despite being shunned by his birth family. I just wish he had had the time to finish the story.
My gladness was a bit ruined though when his significant other (his wife died some years ago) told us his children had changed the locks on his door and barred her from entering the house where she'd lived with him. Perhaps genetics do play a role. It was great knowing him if only for a few months.
5 comments:
One can never explain family dynamics. There are just too many factors beyond out ken.
Condolences to all who knew and loved him.
I did not know him long enough to love him, but I think I would have.
That's awful, but it definitely happens. Jackie worked with a woman whose widowed mother was living for many years with a man. Then one day, his family swooped in and took him back to Canada, leaving this Karen's mother - who had dementia - alone in their apartment, without even warning her family. Just despicable.
My parents were to some degree feeling a bit alienated from their families (not least their mothers, not the most nurturing, to say the least, but put through their own tough times early and late which they didn't overcome), but not so much that they wouldn't visit them, much less were actively hostile to them...
Insane, but the kind of human callousness that gets us everything it gets us. Still insane, really.
So many stories like this. I think of TOKYO STORY (Ozu) where none of the kids can afford to take both parents so they split them up after 50 years.
Post a Comment