Remembering Charles Thomas Gynes on Remembrance Day

 My Great-Grandfather, Grandma's dad.

He died in WWI, in a training accident. The war was over, he was a week or two away from being home, safe and sound. Some munitions got ignited. Poof. His life, and the life of another soldier, became a statistic.

Many people do not realize what kind of impact wars have on families -- thankfully. And many people might question why I mourn the loss of a man I never knew, might never have known.

Yet his death impacted my entire family through the long years right down to me, my daughter, and my stepchildren.

You might be familiar with the English "nursery" rhyme:

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of the horse, the rider was lost.
For want of the rider, the message was lost.
For want of the message, the battle was lost.
For want of the battle, the war was lost.
For want of the war, the kingdom was lost.
All for the want of a horseshoe nail.

For want of Charles Thomas Gynes, his widow (Ada Swarbrick)and mother of his two children (Margaret Doris and William Albert) had to remarry in order to support herself. She married a Canadian soldier who was stationed in England at the time, Mr. Lampron. 

They moved to Canada. They had a daughter, Eva.

Then Ada, my great-grandmother, died. Mr. Lampron didn't want the two hand-me-down children, so he put them in an orphanage.

The first life lesson for my future grandmother, little Doris, was that step-parents don't necessarily love their step-children.

My future grandmother became the epitome of the Brit with the British backbone, getting a job when she was fourteen and getting her little brother out of the orphanage and raising him.

Meanwhile, on my future grandfather's side, young Fred got happily married to Catherine Flavell. They were happy as clams, looking forward to the child Catherine began to carry. Little Florence was born, she was the apple of her father's eye, but Catherine suffered complications due to childbirth, and did not survive long. She made Fred promise to let her mother raise their daughter for two practical reasons: 1) Fred had to work, and theirs was not the friendly-father-figure generation! Men simply could not raise a baby! And 2) she thought Fred might one day remarry, and stepmothers often did not love their stepchildren as they ought. Fred reluctantly agreed, and Little Florence was raised by Catherine's mother.

Two years after the birth of Florence, Fred and Doris met, and it was pretty much instant. Doris was absolutely dying to raise the little girl, but understood the arrangement Fred and Catherine had come to, having experience the not-so-wonderful step-parent relationship herself.

And here is where Doris' wounds began to surface. She had a son, Russell, my future father. The Great Depression hit and they were penniless, living in Grandpa's family home in Dunvegan Ontario through all the years of the depression. Doris had learned early on to budget wisely, and it brought them through intact. But that early lack of security in her home made Doris frantic to gather her family close, like a mother hen. My father had a somewhat problematic relationship with his mother, and a great relationship with his father. Doris clung to every family member.

Then my father met my mother, Patricia Usas. They looked nice together, and Pat had lost her own mother when she was around ten years old. She appreciated Grandma's mothering, probably like pain to dry wood, soaked it in, loved it. Grandma planned a wedding for them, Uncle Bill (William Albert) gave them a reception, and along I came.

By this point, some of the over-mothering was beginning to take its toll on my parents' marriage. Pat and Russ consulted grandma before they bought so much as a toaster. And sex - holy cow! My grandfather believed in abstinence if you didn't want children, and Grandma believed you climbed on and climbed off to get it done! My dad was fine with this, but my mother began to sense something was lacking. Still suffering from her own lack of mother, she confided things to my Grandmother, asking questions the like of which poor Doris had never dreamed of, and was told she had a dirty mind. Don't forget - Doris had had no one to argue with when she was growing up. She didn't know that one could be in conflict with one's parents or children. She had had no parent teach her that sex was a pleasure, and her husband didn't know better either, what were the chances!

Things quickly went south from that point. Since Mother Doris now disapproved of Pat, and Fred adored Doris, both my dad's parents helped my father cool towards his wife. And one day when I was five years old, having joined the Air Force and been posted to Namao Base in Edmonton, my dad packed me up and drove me off out west without a word to my mother.

Physiologically speaking, my mother's stress went to her neck muscles. She was admitted to hospital because her muscles were so knotted up they were constricting the blood flow to the brain.

They relaxed said muscles with morphine. And Pat became instantly addicted, because of course she was part of the 2% of the population that becomes an instant morphine addict. (I learned this about myself when I had my hysterectomy! Instant withdrawal symptoms: sweats, hallucinations, twitching and itching - that's one of my inheritances!)

So, my mother was unable to come get me. My father, who I adored, kidnapped me away from the most important relationship a human being could have. My grandparents agreed with him. Everybody I loved and trusted took me away from my own mother, and claimed to do it out of love. Did do it out of fear of losing me, they did adore me, they wanted to be with me, but nobody thought about how this would affect me.

So I became a bit conflicted...

My grandparents moved out west shortly after my dad and I did, and Grandma's mothering began to take hold again. At first I was glad - hell, I was five years old! My babysitter's daughter was a year older than me and she used to strangle me! I was thrilled to be taken care of by my grandmother! And there's another example of conflict for me - yet another person who was supposed to care for me failed me.

My parents divorced, we moved around, again a pattern of not having permanent friendships, no other voices but my grandmother's. Yes, my grandfather and my father were there, but let's not kid ourselves as to who ruled the roost!

So I grew up having zero trust in anyone who loved me, total obedience to my matriarch grandmother, an absentee mother (as far as I could process) and an emotionally distant military father. Into this mix throw my stepmother Minnie. The minute she said she loved me, I inwardly wondered what she was going to do to me. When she tried to loosen my grandmother's grip on me, again all hell broke loose, and the result was that my father and stepmother left me behind with grandma.

...Because of course, who knows if a step-parent would love a child properly?!

There's that horseshoe nail again! I was prevented from joining my father and his new wife out of the same old fears that had been firmly rooted in my grandparents' lives.

Now just wait till I had my own child, and then years later my own step-children! Woo-hoo! Are we ready for what I had learned at my grandmother's knee? Total overbearing mothering, total domination? Insisting on unquestioning obedience? Expecting my spouse to support me in those cases where conflict arose?

Hah! Did I ever get a comeuppance! And did I EVER take it out on the children!!!

It wasn't always bad. I remember having a lot of fun as a family. But I also remember scenes of blind fury. And at this point my inner demons took hold and I began my depressions. My recognized depressions - I'd been depressed most of my life but didn't realize it. From about the age of five, actually. No wonder. In hospital this time on suicide watch, because I didn't feel safe anywhere.

Any wonder I didn't feel safe anywhere?

But the bottom line to anyone who could see what was going on, was that this stepmother didn't love her stepchildren properly.

So for lack of Charles Thomas Gynes, Doris had a horrible life without a natural parent. She never learned how to handle conflict, she desired above all things to have a family and keep it close. For lack of parental guidance she didn't learn about physical aspects of relationships and became horrified when her daughter-in-law asked questions. Deciding that my mother was unfit, she drove her and my father apart. She came out to care for me and inadvertently taught me how not to handle conflict, how not to handle a lot of things: because every step of my life was planned for me. I never learned to make good choices. And when I got on my own, boy did I make some doozies!

And because of the over-mothering, I over-parented my step children. (Strangely, I'm pretty sure my daughter came out all right - but her story is different. After all, she had her natural mother, and access to her natural father despite the divorce. And both sets of grandparents, and a set of great-grandparents!)

Because of the type of over-parenting I received and the lack of real communication in my family, and because I was taken away from my mother, I suffered depressions.

Seriously, if Charles Thomas had lived...Even if Ada had still died young, Doris and William Albert would have been parented. Perhaps some of Doris' stranger ideas would have been challenged by her father. Perhaps he would have seen to it that she learned a bit about intimacy as she approached marriageable age. Perhaps she would have been more understanding of my mother's questions. Of differences of opinion. Of the necessity of letting young people go, be free to make their own decisions, even if she disagreed with them. Perhaps she wouldn't have taken me away from my mother.

I firmly believe my entire family history was strongly impacted by the death of my great-grandfather, Charles Thomas Gynes.

This is all I have left of him.

At the going down of the sun

And in the morning

We will remember them.