When The Ancestors Speak
22nd of March. I wandered around for about an hour yesterday with the date running through my mind, trying to figure out why it felt so significant and then it came to me like a download from stored knowledge. It is the anniversary of my maternal grandmother’s death. A woman I did not know who died 3 years before I was born, but someone whose spirit has guided me and has often given me a little shove to keep moving.
As the historian of my branch of the family and one of two genealogists in the clan, I know more about this woman from photographs and my ancestral research than I would have known had she and I spent time together. But those are just facts. I have no way of knowing what she thought about her childhood in Scotland, about her mother, her siblings, her life. I don’t know what my grandmother’s voice was like, or if her Aberdeenshire accent faded with the greatest part of her life spent in Canada. I don’t know how she took her tea or what scent she might have worn. I know she was a basic cook having heard my mother often complain about how bland and unappetizing meals at their table were. I’d laugh when she’d say that because my mother was no culinary expert herself, but to her credit she never served us boiled marrow or overcooked celery, two of my grandmother’s specialties. I know certain Gaelic words and expressions she would use because my mother used them and I in turn use them as well. Superstitions? I know them all by heart.
My grandmother passed away in her early sixties from metastasized breast cancer to the liver. That was part of the family lore my sister and I knew and felt deeply.
When diagnosed with my own breast cancer and asked the question – “is there a history of breast cancer in the family?” I was told by all the doctors who were part of my team that my maternal grandmother was not a direct enough link to connect this as “family history.” There is no way to know if my mother or my sister would have developed the disease as both died at early ages. I was then and am still convinced that there is a connection.
There was a point during my treatment when I was tired. Weary. Exhausted. Physically, the toll of chemotherapy and radiation is wearing. Weeks and weeks of hospital visits, first for surgeries, then being poked, prodded and examined. Bloodwork every time you have chemo to be sure your white cell count is high enough (I was blessed to pass “go” each treatment). The hours of sitting in the chair while the toxic cocktail of hope drips into the veins, too tired to read because of the Benadryl you are given to prevent any allergic reaction. The brief session of laying on that “table” being “zapped” with radiation and the damage to the skin. Thirty times for that. Then there is the emotional toll. That was ongoing, long after treatment ended. All this weighing on you, body, and soul, while trying to remain upbeat, chatty, and positive because other people are depending on you. While you are relying on yourself – your inner strength and resolve and the courage to keep going. I never wanted to give up or cry out, “I can’t do this, this is too much,” but there came a time when I reached my lowest moment.
That night I had a dream. My grandmother had a message for me. In the dream, I was on my stomach, on the floor – symbolizing that exhaustion. It was an old, time worn wooden plank floor in a cabin. I knew that old cabin – it was one that my grandparents owned when they had cabins/cottages that they rented out to summer vacationers in the Haliburton area of Ontario. I spent a few summers there with my grandfather when I was a child before he sold the property.
There was a hole in the floor with jagged edges of splintered wood as if a boulder had crashed through, or a sledgehammer had pushed through from below. My grandmother was standing just underneath that hole and behind her were my mother and my sister. Not a word was spoken by these three women. Suddenly, my grandmother grabbed me and began to pull me down through that hole. I could feel her cold hands and the vicelike grip she had on my ankles. Panic set in and I struggled to break free. It was a test of our strength and our wills. Just before waking I shouted at my grandmother - “you have them, but you’re not getting me, not yet. I’m not ready.” The hands released and I sat bolt upright in a cold sweat. The message? Give in or keep going. The choice was mine.
I thought about that dream again last night – a 20-year-old dream being revisited on the anniversary of my grandmother’s death. A download I needed to be reminded of as I’m waiting to find out what comes next in my most recent health journey. When the ancestors speak – even though there are no words - they are sending a message worth listening to. I cannot predict what my body is doing right now and I will not know anything more until I have facts. But I know this. I’m still here, still strong, and still ready to keep going. I thanked my grandmother for the reminder.
