Mavis Lund
I first became interested in Genealogy shortly after the death of my paternal Grandmother, Gran as we called her. She had filled me with family stories that were both fanciful and intriguing and naturally, my research started with this branch of the family. I had dabbled in looking for ancestors on my mother's side of the family, mainly to fill gaps in the tree and complete the whole picture, but I just ended up with a long list of names and dates going back generations. I was lethargic in looking for the flesh to add to the bones on this side of the tree as there had never been a strong sense of 'family' and relatives were either distant or never spoken about. A distinct lack of memorabilia and photographs added to my lethargy as there was nothing exciting to whet my appetite. If I got stuck, I didn't have the interest or the inclination to drive me forward and push through the inevitable brick walls I came across, so it just stayed as a list of names and dates for a number of years.
Eventually, it was when my sister was diagnosed with bowel cancer that snapped me into action again. As my mother had also died of bowel cancer, I had to be tested as a matter of urgency and this included drawing up a detailed family history to see if a possible genetic link could be established. During this process, I discovered that my mother had had a post mortem at the hospital which I knew nothing about. My sister had received a letter from the hospital stating that the post-mortem report was 'somewhat surprising, and somewhat unsatisfactory in so far that it leaves a lot of questions about the illness unexplained.' The cause of her death in the post-mortem was reported as 'bronchopneumonia' and they were hoping to establish what had caused the rapid decline in weight, energy and health prior to her death. They could not, however, find any cause for the weight loss and had therefore attributed it to malnutrition. I found this report very disturbing as it seemed to contradict my mother's death certificate, which stated ‘Carcinomatosis’ and 'Carcinoma colon' as the cause of death.
Prior to my mother's death she had been very ill all the various doctors she saw told her there was nothing wrong with her, it was just stress and she was to pull herself together. I was naturally very confused at the time, as clearly there was something very wrong with her as she had been unable to keep any food down and had lost 6 stone in weight in 6 months. If this illness could not be attributed to anything physical, then there must have been something very wrong with her psychologically. When she was finally admitted to hospital, I was told that her cancer had returned, her body was riddled with it and it had even spread to her bone marrow. This seemed to negate any possibility of mental illness being the root cause of her illness and this remained fact in my mind until the letter regarding the post mortem appeared. As my sister had had two nervous breakdowns over the past 10 years of her life the possibility of mental illness in the family crossed my mind and I needed to search for the truth about the cause of my mother's death. I tried various sources to find the answer to this, I even wrote to the Coroner (the same one who had investigated the Harold Shipman murders in Hyde, Manchester) but unfortunately it had only been an internal post-mortem carried out by the hospital, so the coroner had not been involved. There seemed to be no records kept after 16 years and unfortunately, whichever way I turned, I always drew a blank and to this date I still have not found a satisfactory medical answer.
This left me with no option but to plunge into the past on my mother's side of the family and investigate the possibility of any hereditary psychiatric illness. I wanted to try to clarify why this branch of the family seemed to be rather aloof, to look at how they lived and to explore if the lack of family bonding and sentimentality was due to nature (genetic) or nurture (upbringing). I needed to piece together any clues I could find and build up a picture of what made my mother's family what it was, how it shaped my own upbringing and ultimately, how it made me who I am today. I had, at last, found the spark to spur me into action and I set off on a quest to try to reveal why the family were so detached and why the past seemed to be such a closed book.
Eventually, it was when my sister was diagnosed with bowel cancer that snapped me into action again. As my mother had also died of bowel cancer, I had to be tested as a matter of urgency and this included drawing up a detailed family history to see if a possible genetic link could be established. During this process, I discovered that my mother had had a post mortem at the hospital which I knew nothing about. My sister had received a letter from the hospital stating that the post-mortem report was 'somewhat surprising, and somewhat unsatisfactory in so far that it leaves a lot of questions about the illness unexplained.' The cause of her death in the post-mortem was reported as 'bronchopneumonia' and they were hoping to establish what had caused the rapid decline in weight, energy and health prior to her death. They could not, however, find any cause for the weight loss and had therefore attributed it to malnutrition. I found this report very disturbing as it seemed to contradict my mother's death certificate, which stated ‘Carcinomatosis’ and 'Carcinoma colon' as the cause of death.
Prior to my mother's death she had been very ill all the various doctors she saw told her there was nothing wrong with her, it was just stress and she was to pull herself together. I was naturally very confused at the time, as clearly there was something very wrong with her as she had been unable to keep any food down and had lost 6 stone in weight in 6 months. If this illness could not be attributed to anything physical, then there must have been something very wrong with her psychologically. When she was finally admitted to hospital, I was told that her cancer had returned, her body was riddled with it and it had even spread to her bone marrow. This seemed to negate any possibility of mental illness being the root cause of her illness and this remained fact in my mind until the letter regarding the post mortem appeared. As my sister had had two nervous breakdowns over the past 10 years of her life the possibility of mental illness in the family crossed my mind and I needed to search for the truth about the cause of my mother's death. I tried various sources to find the answer to this, I even wrote to the Coroner (the same one who had investigated the Harold Shipman murders in Hyde, Manchester) but unfortunately it had only been an internal post-mortem carried out by the hospital, so the coroner had not been involved. There seemed to be no records kept after 16 years and unfortunately, whichever way I turned, I always drew a blank and to this date I still have not found a satisfactory medical answer.
This left me with no option but to plunge into the past on my mother's side of the family and investigate the possibility of any hereditary psychiatric illness. I wanted to try to clarify why this branch of the family seemed to be rather aloof, to look at how they lived and to explore if the lack of family bonding and sentimentality was due to nature (genetic) or nurture (upbringing). I needed to piece together any clues I could find and build up a picture of what made my mother's family what it was, how it shaped my own upbringing and ultimately, how it made me who I am today. I had, at last, found the spark to spur me into action and I set off on a quest to try to reveal why the family were so detached and why the past seemed to be such a closed book.
The Power of Love
Mum, Nana, me, Barrie & Linda
I had no idea where to start on this quest, whether the apparent family oddities came from the maternal or paternal side of my mother's family. On the surface, it seemed that the paternal path would prove the most fruitful, as there had been family gossip and hearsay that my Grandfather had been short tempered and a difficult person to get to know. It also appeared extraordinary that I never knew of the existence of his ten brothers and sisters or any of their families until I started tracing my family tree. Eventually, after much deliberation and with very little tangible information to guide me, my childhood reflections and my gut instincts finally directed me to initially follow my mother's maternal branch of the family, the Mumfords.
My own upbringing
When I started reflecting on my own upbringing, it appeared that Linda, my sister and I had exceptionally different memories of our childhood, particularly with regard to our perceptions of our Mother. Linda had described her as being manipulative, malicious and even vindictive which was astonishing, even hurtful to myself, as this was not the way I remembered her at all. One thing we did agree on was that Mum was a very authoritative and controlling woman who found it difficult to show love and affection. I now needed to explore the past and uncover the secrets buried within my own upbringing to enable me to discover what made our memories so very different and why Mum was seemingly so cold towards us.
Although I found Mum to be caring and loving in her own blundering way, Linda thought that Mum never really showed any affection towards her, never hugging or comforting her when she was upset and very quick to shout at her or hit her whenever she did anything wrong. She felt that our years of sibling rivalry were a direct result of Mum's clever manipulation of us, to such an extent that we both believed the other was her favourite and the only one she really loved and cared for.
This was not how I felt at all. I accepted mum for what she was - imperfect, infuriating and sometimes seemingly compassionless, but I also accepted the fact that I loved her even though I didn't like her, and at times even hated her. I suppose I saw through the lack of physical affection and interpreted mum's domineering and strict parenting as being her way of wanting the best for us and felt that dad's love and affection more than made up for any shortfall from mum. I also saw our sibling rivalry as no more than a typical natural jealousy between two sisters and saw no need to look for deeper philosophical reasons for our rivalry. Mum went through the motions of being a mum, but it didn't seem to come naturally to her and it even came across as being contrived at times - she seemed to do things because that's what parents were supposed to do, rather than because she wanted to.
Our very different perceptions of mum could partially be clarified by our very different ways of dealing with a domineering and controlling mother. Linda's survival technique was to be a 'Little Miss Goody Two shoes' and she played the role of the 'perfect' daughter in order to please mum and therefore to hopefully gain the love and affection she craved. My survival technique on the other hand was to be the rebel and I became the 'black sheep' of the family. The result of both these very different ways of living with mum was exactly the same - we both frequently got into trouble. The difference was I expected to get into trouble, as I knew I was doing wrong; Linda on the other hand yearned love and affection for being good and resented mum for not giving it to her.
Another reason for our differences in opinion of Mum could be because I was fortunate enough to get close to her and bond with her before she died. During the last couple of years of her life, we became very close, as we both shared the same distressing loss of our partners, mine through divorce and hers through death. This became the bond that brought us together, but which was regrettably far too short. Then, when her health rapidly deteriorated and she finally died, I missed her more than ever, as I had only just built up a strong relationship with her. Linda, unfortunately, never had this opportunity to bond with Mum and she spent the latter years of her life harbouring deep feelings of anger, bitterness and resentment against her, blaming her for her childhood traumas, alongside her subsequent nervous breakdowns.
Parallels with Barrie's upbringing
Interestingly, when talking to my uncle Barrie, Mums youngest brother, I found he had always harboured the same feelings of being unloved when he was a child as my sister had. He told me that his Mum (Nana) didn't know how to show love and affection (he had even overheard her admit this to someone herself once) and he had felt unloved and unwanted for most of his life. He told me he was always being 'palmed off' onto other people, to get him out of his parent's way. He said that he had been sent on holiday with just about every member of the family, just to get rid of him, but these experiences must have been such disasters, as he was never invited back a second time to repeat the experience. He remembered one holiday when he was 6 and went with his Auntie Betty and her husband to the Isle of Wight and they said it was the worst holiday they had ever been on. The only thing Barrie can remember about it was having a toy yacht and sailing it on a pond and falling in.
These revelations of Nana's inability to show love and affection confirmed my own childhood memories of Nana. Whenever we needed to stay away from home (when Mum was in hospital etc.) we always went to stay with Gran, my paternal grandmother. She was a very warm and caring person, who showered us with love and affection. I can remember that as a child I liked being with Gran, probably more than I liked being with my own Mum, but these feelings were not shared with Nana. Although she was a quiet, very nice and pleasant lady who I liked very much, I never felt the same warmth and closeness towards her as I felt with Gran. We were just there with nana, she showed no specific interest in us or what we did, just a polite and mechanical interest, not surprisingly very similar to that of Mum. There was never the same excitement going to Nana's as there was going to Gran's - we never sat on her knee, hugged or played childhood games and there was always a sense of 'children should be seen and not heard' although this was only a feeling, never explicit.
What next?
If Nana was like this with her children, then this would go some way to explain why Mum was also like she was with us. Armed with this new information and acknowledging my own very different childhood feelings towards my parents, my Gran (Dad's Mum) and Nana (Mum's Mum), the difference between the maternal and paternal lines of the family were stark. Dad's family always had family gatherings and kept in touch with each other, even though some lived as far away as Norway, America and even New Zealand. They had family photographs and family artefacts such as a family bible and special cards and letters that were kept to remind them of special times. There was none of this with Mum's family and in comparison there was only a huge void where all the love, sentimentality and precious memories should have been.
Why was Nana like this? Was the rest of the family like this as well? Did Mum harbour the same anger and resentment against her Mum as Linda did against her? Probably most of these questions would remain unanswered, but I needed to find out whether it was nature or nurture that brought about these cold and 'contrived' relationships within the family. Searching for the truth about the family's past was now essential and this journey would hopefully afford me with a greater understanding of family members, both living and dead. It was going to be a journey through the past that would hopefully bring about a new understanding of myself and my family and with any luck help me to shape a smoother path for my own future.
My next step was to look further into the life of my Nana, Emily Mumford.
My own upbringing
When I started reflecting on my own upbringing, it appeared that Linda, my sister and I had exceptionally different memories of our childhood, particularly with regard to our perceptions of our Mother. Linda had described her as being manipulative, malicious and even vindictive which was astonishing, even hurtful to myself, as this was not the way I remembered her at all. One thing we did agree on was that Mum was a very authoritative and controlling woman who found it difficult to show love and affection. I now needed to explore the past and uncover the secrets buried within my own upbringing to enable me to discover what made our memories so very different and why Mum was seemingly so cold towards us.
Although I found Mum to be caring and loving in her own blundering way, Linda thought that Mum never really showed any affection towards her, never hugging or comforting her when she was upset and very quick to shout at her or hit her whenever she did anything wrong. She felt that our years of sibling rivalry were a direct result of Mum's clever manipulation of us, to such an extent that we both believed the other was her favourite and the only one she really loved and cared for.
This was not how I felt at all. I accepted mum for what she was - imperfect, infuriating and sometimes seemingly compassionless, but I also accepted the fact that I loved her even though I didn't like her, and at times even hated her. I suppose I saw through the lack of physical affection and interpreted mum's domineering and strict parenting as being her way of wanting the best for us and felt that dad's love and affection more than made up for any shortfall from mum. I also saw our sibling rivalry as no more than a typical natural jealousy between two sisters and saw no need to look for deeper philosophical reasons for our rivalry. Mum went through the motions of being a mum, but it didn't seem to come naturally to her and it even came across as being contrived at times - she seemed to do things because that's what parents were supposed to do, rather than because she wanted to.
Our very different perceptions of mum could partially be clarified by our very different ways of dealing with a domineering and controlling mother. Linda's survival technique was to be a 'Little Miss Goody Two shoes' and she played the role of the 'perfect' daughter in order to please mum and therefore to hopefully gain the love and affection she craved. My survival technique on the other hand was to be the rebel and I became the 'black sheep' of the family. The result of both these very different ways of living with mum was exactly the same - we both frequently got into trouble. The difference was I expected to get into trouble, as I knew I was doing wrong; Linda on the other hand yearned love and affection for being good and resented mum for not giving it to her.
Another reason for our differences in opinion of Mum could be because I was fortunate enough to get close to her and bond with her before she died. During the last couple of years of her life, we became very close, as we both shared the same distressing loss of our partners, mine through divorce and hers through death. This became the bond that brought us together, but which was regrettably far too short. Then, when her health rapidly deteriorated and she finally died, I missed her more than ever, as I had only just built up a strong relationship with her. Linda, unfortunately, never had this opportunity to bond with Mum and she spent the latter years of her life harbouring deep feelings of anger, bitterness and resentment against her, blaming her for her childhood traumas, alongside her subsequent nervous breakdowns.
Parallels with Barrie's upbringing
Interestingly, when talking to my uncle Barrie, Mums youngest brother, I found he had always harboured the same feelings of being unloved when he was a child as my sister had. He told me that his Mum (Nana) didn't know how to show love and affection (he had even overheard her admit this to someone herself once) and he had felt unloved and unwanted for most of his life. He told me he was always being 'palmed off' onto other people, to get him out of his parent's way. He said that he had been sent on holiday with just about every member of the family, just to get rid of him, but these experiences must have been such disasters, as he was never invited back a second time to repeat the experience. He remembered one holiday when he was 6 and went with his Auntie Betty and her husband to the Isle of Wight and they said it was the worst holiday they had ever been on. The only thing Barrie can remember about it was having a toy yacht and sailing it on a pond and falling in.
These revelations of Nana's inability to show love and affection confirmed my own childhood memories of Nana. Whenever we needed to stay away from home (when Mum was in hospital etc.) we always went to stay with Gran, my paternal grandmother. She was a very warm and caring person, who showered us with love and affection. I can remember that as a child I liked being with Gran, probably more than I liked being with my own Mum, but these feelings were not shared with Nana. Although she was a quiet, very nice and pleasant lady who I liked very much, I never felt the same warmth and closeness towards her as I felt with Gran. We were just there with nana, she showed no specific interest in us or what we did, just a polite and mechanical interest, not surprisingly very similar to that of Mum. There was never the same excitement going to Nana's as there was going to Gran's - we never sat on her knee, hugged or played childhood games and there was always a sense of 'children should be seen and not heard' although this was only a feeling, never explicit.
What next?
If Nana was like this with her children, then this would go some way to explain why Mum was also like she was with us. Armed with this new information and acknowledging my own very different childhood feelings towards my parents, my Gran (Dad's Mum) and Nana (Mum's Mum), the difference between the maternal and paternal lines of the family were stark. Dad's family always had family gatherings and kept in touch with each other, even though some lived as far away as Norway, America and even New Zealand. They had family photographs and family artefacts such as a family bible and special cards and letters that were kept to remind them of special times. There was none of this with Mum's family and in comparison there was only a huge void where all the love, sentimentality and precious memories should have been.
Why was Nana like this? Was the rest of the family like this as well? Did Mum harbour the same anger and resentment against her Mum as Linda did against her? Probably most of these questions would remain unanswered, but I needed to find out whether it was nature or nurture that brought about these cold and 'contrived' relationships within the family. Searching for the truth about the family's past was now essential and this journey would hopefully afford me with a greater understanding of family members, both living and dead. It was going to be a journey through the past that would hopefully bring about a new understanding of myself and my family and with any luck help me to shape a smoother path for my own future.
My next step was to look further into the life of my Nana, Emily Mumford.