Auntie Ridie (or was it Auntie Nellie who lived in one of the old people’s bungalows on Cadaw Avenue?)
Uncle Ron and Aunt Win on Montague Road
Aunt Florrie on Henry Street
Arthur and his wife whose name began with “M” on Ruffs Estate
I knew them all when I was a kid. But it’s a matter of some frustration to me now that I haven’t a clue where they fitted into our wider family.
Were some of them cousins of my mam? Or brothers and sisters or cousins of my grandma and grandad?
And there’s no-one left now to ask. Perhaps I’m the only person alive who remembers them, albeit for some as little more than names.
Their lives are passed and when I’m gone so too will be their memory. It’ll be as though they’d never lived.
It’s seductive to believe in an afterlife when I could stand in front of that proud and huge tree of my ancestry and see with total clarity their and my place on it. And more importantly still, that our lives can still mean something to each other.
