January 2020 | Clare Henney

I no longer have my grandparents around. Both sides of grandparents have passed away, with the most recent one being my maternal grandmother who died three years ago. I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone else but I didn’t really know my grandparents. While I consider myself close to my paternal grandmother when I was younger, I never really knew her apart from being a doting grandmother who loved her coffee and soap operas because I was only in high school when she passed away. I never knew my paternal grandfather and did not know my maternal one well either (he was separated from my grandmother by the time I was in the picture). In short, my grandparents were mysteries to me apart from being actual grandparents. 

I never got the chance to know each grandparent as a person: as a human being who was also young once and lived a life full of experiences I would have, in hindsight, been interested to learn about. Now that I am older, I am fascinated by my family history. Looking at old pictures makes me want to know more.  What kind of childhood did they have? What kind of kids were they? What made them into the people that I knew when I was growing up?