As we grow older, we all have versions of events that we hold on to no matter what the evidence might be. Our view of certain occurrences in the past are such a part of who we think we are, that we often are loathe to part with them.
This came home to me when my daughter, who was doing family research on Ancestor.com, was contacted by someone declaring that my grandfather had a son whom he had conveniently forgotten. This grandfather had died in a plane crash just after serving in World War I. He had been a widower when he met my grandmother in France, and I heard many conflicting things about the woman he had been married to first. One version had her and a son killed when riding in a train, another that they were killed in a car which was hit by a train. In addition, the boy in question was my grandfather’s son or he was the result of a pervious marriage on his wife’s part. I enjoy research, so I began to search the web to find out what really had happened. After a great deal of work, I found the article from the local newspaper of that time describing in detail the accident in which a car had been stalled on a crossing and was hit by a speeding train. The article was very specific about the people involved and the results of the accident. Further research proved that the five-year-old boy in question was the result of the woman’s first marriage and was not my grandfather’s child.
I thought my family would be interested in the facts I had uncovered, but they definitely were not. I was cut off or ignored when I brought the subject up and found that whatever story someone held about that event was the version to which they were sticking. I also realized that it was unkind to shake up what someone thought of the past if that version was not hurting anyone. Not only did I immediately desist from telling anyone of my research, but I began to be careful about what I thought had happened in my own past. Certainly, I could not be the only one free from unconsciously manipulated stories of the long-ago. the telling glamorize my role or make it more tragic than it was? Did it fit into the script I had written of my 80 years on this planet? Then perhaps I had at worst be more careful, and at best live in the here and now with all the honesty I could muster. The past should not be manipulated into the prologue we wish it to be instead of what it truly was.