I pulled into the driveway of my grandmother’s home and saw a waft of smoke swirling out of the vent in the roof that connected to the basement incinerator. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence. Grandma was going to sell her estate and move in with my parents so as she went through paperwork that wasn’t needed for the move, she would slowly incinerate documents, bank statements, and the sort. If I saw smoke coming from the chimney I knew she was burning larger items like lamp shades or other burnable pieces she no longer wanted and didn’t deem good enough to sell in one of her many garage sales or on eBay, which is why I was in Illinois at the time.
As an antiques dealer, I helped grandma sell her more profitable antiques and vintage items that her and my grandfather collected over the course of their marriage. Many were purchased items, but a good deal came from various family members’ estate auctions. Most everything had a story. Grandma would often write out paragraphs pertaining to the items I was going to place on eBay. She recalled where they purchased the item and when or which family member the item originated. And if there was an additional story, it was attached, as well. Those stories filled her eBay listings and helped sell so many things. I was often e-mailed and told the reason that person decided to buy the item was because they loved the story.
My grandmother was filled with stories and an iron-clad memory bank and as such, wrote in diaries for many years. She kept past diaries in a wooden apothecary cabinet in the dining room and often would refer back either to compare temperatures and weather from years past or to confirm a story that we were discussing but couldn’t remember specifics. If we knew the approximate year and month, she’d find the story and read to us that day’s entry which left nothing to question. I always felt her diaries were such a source of richness because they contained the daily life of my family, the neighbors, and just anything that she felt was important enough to log.
When I entered the house the day I saw the smoke, she was still in the basement feeding more paperwork into the incinerator. As we stood talking, she indicated that she had burned all her dairies because “no one is interested in that dribble,” and she burned all of my grandfather’s love letters to her because “they were for my eyes only.”
I remember feeling like I was punched in the gut. “Grandma,” I said, “that was our family history! I would have loved to have kept your dairies and pop's letters.” This was met with a purse of her lips and the statement, “No one but us cares. So I burned it all.” And that was that.
The stories are now memories. Memories like when the harvest yellow radio in the kitchen started playing, “True Love” she’d stop whatever she was doing and would turn around and tell me for at least the 100th time that this was her wedding song. She’d stand and listen to each word sometimes in a dream-like state no doubt reliving that first dance to my grandfather, Martin Nehring, and sometimes she’d sing along. To this day when I hear that sweet song, I’m taken back to her kitchen in Sycamore, Illinois.
I have so many memories of her in that kitchen baking, or sitting at the breakfast bar eating saltine crackers and vanilla ice cream. I remember her grabbing the ladder and climbing up to rescue the Barbie that was stuck in the tree because I pretended that Barbie was at the circus and was thrown up in the air during a circus act. I always think of her when I iron because she was a perfectionist and insisted everything needed to be ironed, including sheets. So many memories and yet so many lost in that incinerator. Thankfully she had two daughters who both had families so there are a handful of us to bounce stories around.
Encourage your parents and grandparents to keep their history; the cards, the letters, the hand-written memories. They are gifts to the following generations hungry to find their place in the family story.
