Nana's Diaries
Diaries, photo albums, recipes, and antiques are all precious family heirlooms.
Young Love — An Adoptee's Memoir
Highlights from Chapter 2, including
"the cornerstone of my life as an adoptee."
My parents were not overly sentimental. I loved my grandfather's photography slide collection and his stamp books. Sadly, I suspect they were thrown out. But I wouldn't let Nana's diaries get away!
"You really want them?" my mom asked.
Fortunately, it wasn't too late. I've treasured them for over fifty years. The diaries cover the late 1930s through 1969.
My father pooh-poohed the diaries as superficial accounts of hair appointments, friends' aches and pains, and the weather! He was right, but he missed all the other descriptions of events, both worldly and close to home. The diaries weave the story of life during and following WWII and its impact on families. Over the years, I've searched Nana's diaries for accounts of family holidays, birthdays, and summer vacations at our summer cottage. All families have stories to tell. How lucky I am that my nana wrote them down.
The most compelling diary entries describe our immediate family events and challenges. In the previous chapter, I wrote about my father's disability after WWII and my parents' subsequent decision to adopt my sister and me.
At some point, as I was trying to recall the sequence of events regarding Dad's disability from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, I turned to Nana's diaries.
The circumstances and Nana's accounts of them are the cornerstone of my life as an adoptee in this family. Dad may have disparaged them, but Nana's diaries chronicled the story of his suffering and a family's love.
. . . August 1957, something went terribly wrong. Dad was back in the VA hospital in Montreal. Family started arriving and friends took care of the three of us. Dad was on antibiotics, and everyone was hoping they would not need to operate. Nana described what happened next.
September 6, 1957 excerpt:
Home all day waiting for call from Mary about Don. It came about one. Don is very ill after a major operation . . .
They have special nurses on with him. They think he will make a rapid recovery as he will soon be able to take food orally . . . Dr. Gardner told Mary he had never seen anything to compare with the condition he found and he wishes he had operated sooner. We are concerned about Don but hope and pray he can weather this ordeal for a couple of days until he can take nourishment.
September 7, 1957 excerpt:
Left early for Ste. Annes.
Mary was very tired. She had such a hectic day in the hospital yesterday when Don was so very ill—He just about slipped away before they got the intravenous feeding going in his jugular vein. Poor fellow, what an ordeal he has been through. Mary so tired and worried.
Mom told us a couple of remarkable details that I've never forgotten. With his scientific background, Dad understood his illness and conferred with his doctor. In one situation, the doctor disagreed with Dad. As Mom told us, she took the doctor out in the hall and gave him a piece of her mind. The doctor took Dad's advice, and the treatment was successful.
Early on the morning of April 5, 2001, my sister and sister-in-law and I were by Dad's side until he died peacefully. He was 85 years old. At one point near the end, he remarked, "There's Mary, and the others." Dad would have pooh-poohed that, much as he pooh-poohed Nana's diaries.
The spirit of love is pretty powerful, Dad. With Nana's diaries, we have an account of your decades-long, heart-wrenching battle to stay alive, and the determination of Mom and the family to be there for you.
It's a true love story.