Family Quarrels Lead To..........

I mentioned before that my grandfather always told me he didn't have any family left. I just always assumed that the rest of the family had stayed in Europe and died there. I don't remember him ever even mentioning his family. My grandfather died in 1977.

Fast forward to 1993......

I was visiting my grandmother one day and I was clearing off the table in preperation to eat some lunch with her. I picked up the bills and papers she had been working on and noticed a letter she had been reading. The return address on the envelope said "Bob Loos" and he lived in Novelty, Ohio. WHAT????? Who was this Bob Loos and why did he have my last name and why was he writing to my grandmother???

I asked my grandmother who he was and she told me, very nonchalantly, that he was my dad's cousin. Again....WHAT???? Dad had a Loos cousin I had never heard of?? What was going on? I asked her how he was related. She told me that Bob's dad had been my grandfather's brother. For the third time.....WHAT????? My grandfather had a brother??? Oh yes, and another brother, and a sister too. Ok. Last time....WHAT???? She didn't seem to want to tell me anything more about them, so I let it go, but the wheels in my mind were spinning.

After lunch she went upstairs. After a few minutes she called me up and I found her sitting in the spare room on the bed. She had an old shoe box next to her and she pushed it towards me. I looked at it and then at her and she motioned for me to open it.

I opened the shoe box not sure what I would find. When the lid came off there, on the top of the pile of things in the box, were people I didn't know nor had ever seen staring out at me. The people in the picture had names written by them, in my grandfather's handwriting. He was one of the boys in the picture. The rest of the people were his family.....his dad, mom, brothers, and sister. My grandmother then told me that I should have this box full of pictures and wouldn't say much more about it.

I carried the box downstairs and then copied the address for Bob Loos down and as soon as I got home I wrote to him. I introduced myself to him - told him who my dad was and who my grandfather had been. Not long after I sent that letter Bob mailed me back. He introduced himself to me and told me about his wife and his girls. Then he started telling me about the family I had never known. He even told me that my grandfather's sister, Mary, was still alive. Wow. I had Loos family and they were all here in Ohio. Wow.

One question still loomed in my mind....what had happened to the family that lead my grandfather to tell me that he had no family and that they were all gone?

Bob sent me my grand-aunt Mary's address and I sat down to write to her. I took great care in the wording of the letter and in telling her who I was and how I had come to find her. She was very elderly and I didn't want to shock her with my sudden "appearance".

Almost immediately I heard from Aunt Mary...a seething, horrible, mean letter. I was shocked, I was hurt, and in the end I was mad. She had basically told me that I was the scum of the earth and she never wanted to hear from me again. Aagain, I was mad. I might be a lot of things, but scum of the earth is not one of them. So, I wrote her back....and was very sweet about it. I explained to her that I had not intended to dredge up a lot of bad memories for her and that I had no idea about any family rift or what had happened, and, most of all, I was not involved in that rift as I was two generations away from it. I stamped it, sent it and figured that that avenue of my new found family was now closed.

Imagine my surprise when I got the sweetest letter, about a week later, from that same aunt who had all but condemned me to hell. She apologized for her first letter and began to tell me about herself. We carried on the exchange of letters until
1997.

It seems that my grandmother and grandfather had caused some trouble in the family by borrowing some money that never got paid back, and for a few other things too. Aunt Mary hadn't spoken to my grandfather for years and years and neither had her brother or her mother. Basically, I suppose, my grandfather had been dead to them because of the "problem".

There's a lesson to be learned here. Nothing should ever come between family. At least nothing that lasts forever. My grandfather suffered at the "loss" of his family, though he never said so I know he did. My dad suffered because he never got to know his own grandmother or his aunt and uncle. I suffered for the same reason...I never got to know my family. I was denied the opportunity because of some stupid quarrel in the family.

No one should ever be denied their right to know their family. Period.