Our Own Ghosts

Reading and reflecting upon “No Name Woman” prompted me to think about my own family's ghosts, one of which is my paternal grandmother, who haunts me in particular. She is rarely spoken of, and if she is, she's usually remembered graciously as the warm, lamb-like woman that raised my two uncles and my aunt. When she was thirty she gave birth to my father, and from that day forth became a psychosis-ridden shadow of her former self, becoming sicker and sicker until she was institutionalized until the time of her death at around age 55. At one point in time, when my father was an infant, she was kept tethered to the bed so that she would not wander off and harm herself or anyone else. I was able to glean snippets of information here and there, but no one in my family will talk at length about my Grandmother Ruth, or of the true nature of her illnesses. I am often told that I bear a striking resemblance to her though, and that some of my mannerisms are much like hers.

I really do not have cultural differences to reconcile as does the author of the story. Her heritage and familial traditions make her own story difficult and hard to truly understand as a Western thinker. The message that her mother imparts is fairly straightforward, though the details are horrifying and difficult to digest. As children, we all have been told cautionary stories by our caretakers at one point or another, sometimes about our own family members or family friends in order to warn us of the dire consequences of our careless actions. One does have to consider, what if my grandmother had fallen ill at an earlier time when my family still lived in Ireland? Would my family's view of my Grandmother and her illness have changed? In comparison, my family's heritage and the author's are too different. My own family's near silence is not as much of a distant cultural issue. There are gender issues, my grandmother being the matriarch that could no longer be a mother or a wife, but they are subdued in the face of those present in Kingston's story. However, I've still been cautioned by family members to be careful under huge amounts of pressure, as if something was lurking under the surface and could rupture and send me to the hospital in a state much like my Grandmother's.