There is a theory that most people will be completely forgotten within three generations. After that time nobody still living will have heard the sound of their voices or felt the impact of their personalities. They may leave behind photographs or documents attesting to their presence on this earth but essentially they are defined not by memories but by images. Of course the modern era is rectifying this with digital footprints that might include recordings and moving pictures. Such used to be the purview of only the wealthy but now even common folk have access to technology. This is not the case for most of those who came before us and so they are slowly but surely being forgotten.
I have a great grandmother who is a mystery. I think that her name was Marion Rourke but of that I am not certain. She was the mother of my grandfather, William Mack Little. He told us that she died three days after he was born. There is no record of any of this. In spite of my relentless searches, Marion remains a cipher, as though she never even existed.
Of course there has to have been such a person because William was not just found in a cabbage patch. He had a father named James Mack who took him to live with a woman that he called his grandmother known as Sarah Reynolds. Sadly I have been unable to find any records for these individuals. They walked on this earth as though they were ghosts, phantoms of my grandfather’s imagination.
William never knew Marion but he thought enough of her to name his first born daughter after her. It was his touching way of honoring her. I suspect that he always wondered who Marion was and what she was like, just as I do. It saddens me to think that she died at what should have been one of the happiest moments of her life. She had a good strong son who would ironically live to be one hundred eight years old. He was a very kind and intelligent man who treated women with the highest regard. He no doubt would have been a dutiful son to the woman who brought him into the world.
Marion’s last name indicates a connection of some kind with Ireland. My grandfather always claimed to be half Scottish and half Irish and I have verified such roots with a DNA test that I once took. I wonder if she was born in the Emerald Isle or if she was a descendent of someone who originally came from there. She had a beautiful name and was someone’s daughter, but who might that have been? She was obviously quite poor according to what little my grandfather knew of her. He was her first child and I wonder what happened that made her so ill that she died.
When I had my first daughter my labor was long and hard. There were complications and my doctor later told me that in the old days I might have lost the baby or even died myself. I wonder if I somehow inherited the same genetic disposition for difficult birthing that Marion had. Do I have an idea of what she might have endured? Was she alone and frightened as things went awry? Did she realize that she would not live long enough to see her son grow into a man? Such thoughts haunt me as I attempt to remember her without any facts to steer me in the right direction.
I try not to forget Marion. Someone has to think of her. Each St. Patrick’s Day I celebrate the Irish in me and attempt to imagine my great grandmother. I cook corned beef and cabbage and celebrate my own life that would not exist were it not for the sacrifice of her own. I so want to know her and probably never really will.
My grandfather is not quite sure where he was born nor where he spent his childhood. It was somewhere in Virginia where he was able to see hills in the distance. By the age of thirteen he was orphaned again when his grandmother died and he became a ward of the state. He chose John Little as his guardian because he was an honorable man, a graduate of West Point. Grandpa took “Little” as his last name in honor of the individual who helped him to complete his journey into adulthood. Sadly John Little died of typhus when he was in his early thirties leaving my grandfather all alone again. Grandpa had to fight hard to find reasons to to stay alive, and somehow he always did. He had an optimism that was inspiring. I wonder if he inherited that trait from Marion? Would she have been proud to see him overcoming one challenge after another?
I feel a kinship with Marion both as a woman and as her great granddaughter. I know that she lives somewhere in me. I would love to know where she was born, what she did as a child, how she met James and where she was finally buried. It has been a kind of holy grail for me to find out who she really was and I am not yet ready to give up even though I have spent years searching for someone who seems not to have even existed. She deserves to be known and loved and treasured.
On St. Patrick’s Day I will once again prepare my traditional meal and think of her. It is possible that I will be the last person to do so. She will one day become forgotten just as the countless individuals who came before her. I am determined to tell her story even if I have to fill in the blanks to describe the details. I know from the scant information regarding her untimely death that she had been loved enough by James to bring forth a child and that hers was a difficult existence devoid of the medical help that might have insured her survival. I know that her son was a strong, bright and healthy man who would have been a joy to her. I know enough about genetics to realize that she must have been an intelligent woman. Her DNA has helped to produce some quite outstanding descendants.
Marion is a name said to have derived from the Hebrew “Miryam” which means “sea of sorrow.” I hope that this is not an accurate description of hurt and pain that my great grandmother may have endured. I would like to believe that she found peace and that somehow she knows how well things turned out for her son and his son and finally for me.
I’ll never forget the feeling of disappointment that Texans felt when Alaska became a state. The home of the Alamo known as the Lone Star state had reigned as the largest in the nation, a distinction that it not so secretly enjoyed, only to be toppled by a faraway newcomer. Suddenly our second place status stole some of our bragging rights and mostly silenced our boasts about the enormity of our home. Still, anyone who has ever travelled from El Paso to Orange not only understands the daunting distance of such a drive but has seen the dramatic changes in the landscape that lie along the highway. Texas is a place of incredible diversity and describing it in a few words is almost impossible. 
Red was a beautiful girl, no doubt because of her striking ginger colored hair. She was always a lady who often loved to wander aimlessly for hours just enjoying the sights and sounds of the world around her. She was a very good friend, loyal beyond imagination and her gentleness was such that every member of my family loved her. When she was with me I felt special. She hung on my every word like nobody I had ever known. I was enchanted with her. Heck, even my neighbors got to know her and they too fell for her magnetic personality.
When I was a little girl women’s roles were still mostly traditional. Few of the women that I knew worked full time outside of the home. My mother was forced into such a situation when she became a widow, otherwise I doubt that she would have been anything other than a homemaker. I had a couple of aunts who were trailblazers in terms of having careers and some of my neighbors were employed in very interesting jobs. One was a commercial artist who wore exotic clothing and furnished her house with ultra modern furniture. Another was a lawyer who sometimes cried when speaking of her inability to have children but seemed to truly enjoy her work. She often invited me over for tea and to play cards or checkers, all the while encouraging me to do something remarkable with my life just as she had. All in all though not many women were yet ready for the feminist revolution that would eventually off like a rocket when I became a teenager.
I’ve seen a great deal of change during my life that I tend not to even think about most of the time. I am a Catholic and until I was a teenager there was an ironclad rule that none of us were to eat meat on Fridays. The idea behind that ruling was that Jesus died on that day of the week and in remembrance of his suffering we were to abstain from meat as a kind of penance and sacrifice. In 1966, the year that I graduated from high school, Vatican Council II amended that dictate to require only that Catholics avoid eating meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all Fridays during Lent. A council of bishops later clarified the church’s stance on the consumption of meat on Fridays by suggesting that all Catholics over the age of fourteen perform some type of penance on every Friday of the year with avoidance of meat being one of the suggested forms of meeting that goal. For all intents and purposes the vast majority of Catholics today are no longer concerned about whether or not to eat meat on Fridays. The times of worry about sinning by eating a hamburger are long gone for most who follow the Catholic faith.
