Category: The Words

The elusive narwhals. Natures ocean unicorns. This belongs here, because narwhals. Ocean Unicorns!

I have realized one thing. Advice I have given many friends, also applies to me.

This advice for instance: Really think your words through before you put them out there for every one else to hear.

I have no real excuse for my recent behavior….only that it has been a very trying 2015….and instead of following some list of grieving and hurting, like apparently “normal” people do…

I pushed emotions and words aside that I should have explained….And proceeded to only say them at said times when they were not pertinent to my current situation….

So in essence. I cannot apologize for the parts of me I know were being honest. But I can apologize for not choosing my words more wisely.

Also, So far I am digging 2016…..

Today’s events keep fading. Conversations. The odd feelings. The tears. Other details…just keep fading. 
And I feel like the lights inside of me are flickering back on. I see my goals again. I have things lined up…
It’s as if my life just needed a minute…to help me let go and grieve. Before I set out to volunteer my life to missions. 

I have been blessed. It’s time for me to continue forward, and give back all that has been done for me. And then some. 
Life, I love you.

January 2015. The first of many surgeries was coming up…
And I told myself “self, if you can’t fucking come to grips with what’s happening in your life THIS YEAR. Then by 2016, you, self, are going to stop overthinking things, stop letting your mind defeat your life, and you’re going to pick up weight lifting, fast walking (cause everyone loves to look like they have to take a shit while walking) or even, straight up JOGGING.
Here it is. December 2015, and if last nights words and mindfuck didn’t clue me in then last nights dreams did. 
My mind is DONE. I can’t wrap my head around anything anymore. 
So I went for my first jog today…and now I wish that I was still jogging….instead of sitting here writing this post. 
………….

A lot has happened, that’s always my opening line. Because it’s simple…and it gets right to the point of my life these past 5 years….

  sometimes, you have to let people hold on extremely tight to your past. What an asshole you were. How many drugs you did. And any of their own personal made up judgments. 

There is no such thing as reasoning with people who only know put downs. Because truly that’s all they know to throw at you. It just doesn’t come in any other form but irony and ridiculousness…

And why should you be okay with someone who has made up your past for you, bringing it up currently? Because they need it, require it, and embrace it. Since you’re not using your past anymore. Let them have it. Don’t be selfish…

as an ex addict. My job, is to keep moving forward…and if I happen to slip up, and reach out to my past? I have to take any and all of the bile that billows up from it. I have to take responsibility for any and all ugly and grotesque that comes from anyone after reaching back. That’s my lesson, that’s my job…and if it turns in to a practice of letting go, then that’s the silver lining…whether I like it, or not. 
The End. 

So, you would think that nightmares for me means, blood and gore, and horrible scenes and scary boogeymen….but those are just interesting.

Nightmares for me are the ones where I am suddenly thrown back in time with people who have zero care of my well being. Who watch me get drugged disappear from my family for days acting out of character, and getting my car towed, and then laugh at the things THEY remember me doing when I have no inkling of what happened. And then I lose my husband, my life, my kid, and my Ashcraft family. All while trying to piece together how I could have strayed again….

That was my nightmare last night. There is no joy or fantasy when you stumble in to a threesome you don’t remember, do drugs you don’t remember, and are surrounded by people who find joy in you fucking up your life.

I am glad to be awake today….the nightmare was so vivid because it was how I used to be. It startled me out of sleep and had me grabbing for Scotty and waking him up to make sure we were still on solid ground together.

So please, give me back the nightmares of horrific scenes, boogeymen with no purpose, ghosts set on replay, anything but the monster I used to be, the monster with a drug addiction and no concept of caring for myself much less anyone else.

I assume that you all have received your letters from the London solicitors informing you of the amount of your inheritance. It worked out very close to what I thought it would. I had hoped that Veronica’s assets had grown since the time of her death in 1989, but obviously that did not happen. In California if a person dies with no known heirs the estate reverts or “escheats” to the state. I believe that it is standard procedure for the state’s office of unclaimed property to turn all of the assets into cash, and that cash goes into the state’s general fund. A rightful heir can always come along and claim the property, even decades later, and the state will still honor the claim; but the state does not pay interest on cash. I assume this is also the case in the UK, so that if Veronica’s estate was valued at 118,000 pounds in 1989 it is still only worth 118,000 pounds 25 years later. A shame, but then I doubt that the money means all that much to any of you. It’s the family history that matters, if anything does, and I thought some of you might be interested in Veronica’s story. We have heard from Ian McDonald’s wife, Lillian, (Ian is the son another of Veronica’s cousins and an heir) who was kind enough to respond to a letter from my cousin, Beverley Wright, who also provided some additional information from her own research about the family. It’s a very sad story, to say the least.

We have to begin with Elsie McDonald. All of the relevant relationships come through her. Elsie (nee Proctor) was born in Stonehaven, Scotland, a town on the east coast just south of Aberdeen. She married John McDonald in 1871, a ship’s carpenter from the town of Birse, which is just a bit inland from Aberdeen. They had two sons: John and George. Shortly after George was born, John McDonald died and Elsie moved with her boys to Birse where she took a job as a housekeeper at a Roman Catholic rectory (where the priests live). Shortly thereafter her son John also died. When George was about four years old Elsie became pregnant by one of the priests at the rectory. I don’t know if this can be confirmed as fact, but it is a bit of family lore that everyone seems to have known. Even Phyllis told me once that she’d heard that Elsie had a child by a Catholic priest. In any event, we do know that Elsie gave birth to Mary in 1878. Having a child out of wedlock, let alone by a priest, was a shameful thing tantamount to a crime in those days. The child, Mary, was taken from Elsie and placed in a “home” run by nuns in Aberdeen. The place was (and still is) called Nazareth House. I have not been able to find any information about what conditions were like at Nazareth House in the 1800’s, but the place is infamous today for the mistreatment and abuse — physical, sexual, and psychological — of the children who grew up there in the 50’s and 60’s. There was a huge scandal and a lawsuit that resulted in a large settlement. Search “Nazareth House Aberdeen” to learn more. I would think that conditions were worse, if anything, while Mary was growing up. Elsie McDonald went on to have three more children: Albert (1881 in Birse), William (1884 in Stonehaven), and Ann (1885 in Stonehaven). Albert’s last name was Shaw. William and Ann took their mother’s married name, McDonald. We really don’t know who fathered any of these last three. Lillian says that Ian’s side of the family was aware that Elsie had given birth to a child by a priest but had always thought it must be Albert. That’s because Mary was “disappeared” as an infant. Only Elsie knew of her existence, and she wasn’t telling. Elsie must have died some time around 1900, while Ann (my grandmother) was still in her teens.

So what happened to Elsie McDonald’s six children? The first, John, died in early childhood, which was a pretty common occurrence back in the day. The second, George, lived to maturity and had children. That’s where half of the estate is going. George is the grandfather of Ian McDonald, one of the heirs. The third, Mary, was sent off to Nazareth House. More about her shortly. The fourth, Albert Shaw, apparently died without having any children. The fifth, William, died in the First World War in 1916, apparently without having any children. The sixth, Ann McDonald, immigrated to Canada in about 1902 and had four children of whom Phyllis, my mother, was the youngest.

When Mary grew up, she and a friend she had lived with at Nazareth House, Elizabeth Hunter, went off to London to work as domestic servants. In 1900 Mary had a child, Veronica, but “could not keep her,” according to Lillian. I don’t know what that means. Lillian doesn’t mention anything about the father, so maybe that is unknown. Veronica was put in foster care, but her foster mother died when she was seven. She was then taken in by Mary’s friend, Elizabeth Hunter, whose married name was then Hammond. Apparently the Hammond family raised Veronica as their own daughter, although they did not legally adopt her. According to Lillian, some of the Hammond family members only found out when Veronica died that she was not their blood relative. Lillian notes that if Veronica had left a will she surely would have left her estate to members of the Hammond family, and we would never have known she existed. Veronica married Lionel Stewart Sinclair, and they had a son, Roy, in 1922. Roy died at the age of three. There were no more children. Lionel predeceased Veronica, who died in 1989.

Just picking out the highlights here — Elsie loses her husband and then her firstborn son in rapid succession. Finding work at a Catholic rectory, she is “taken advantage of” by a priest and bears a third child, who is immediately taken from her and raised in an infamously abusive orphanage run by nuns. I assume that Mary never met her own mother. Mary herself then bears a child while in domestic service in London. We can only guess at the circumstances. That child, Veronica, in turn, is taken from her — or Mary must give her up — and is raised in foster care. Veronica not only does not know her real mother, her foster mother dies when she is seven. The only bright spot in any of this is the fact that Veronica is then taken in by Elizabeth Hammond and raised as one of her own. Lillian does not mention what happened to Mary, but somehow she is out of the picture and unable to care for her daughter. Veronica grows up and has a child of her own who dies at the age of three. I think that about covers it. It’s hard to imagine a sadder history — three generations of dislocation and death. It doesn’t say much for the Catholic Church or the powerlessness of women in those times.

In any event, Mary and Annie McDonald were half sisters, and so Phyllis and Veronica were half cousins; but no one other than Elsie knew of Mary’s existence, and so no one in the family knew of Veronica’s existence. It was only Hooper’s research that uncovered the relationship. According to Lillian, this came about because the 1911 census was released to the public in 2009, revealing that Elsie had given birth to a daughter in 1878. There is a popular television program in the UK called “Heir Hunters” that has been going on for many years. A few years ago they featured the story of the search for Veronica Sinclair’s heirs. Lillian has sent a copy of this program on dvd to Beverely Wright, who is having it converted to a format that can be viewed in the US and Canada. We are expecting to receive a copy in the next few weeks.

According to notes that Phyllis left behind, Annie McDonald’s mother, Elsie, died of cancer while Annie was in her teens. Annie went to live with one of her brothers — Phyllis didn’t say which one and probably didn’t know — but that didn’t work out; so at the age of 17, Annie came to Canada as an indentured servant. She worked as a domestic in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where she became pregnant with my uncle Walter. Apparently she was fired from her position, despite her indenture — the lady of the house probably didn’t want her around — and began work as a waitress at a railroad cafe. It was there she met Tom Cassidy, an engineer with the Canadian Pacific Railway, who married her despite her pregnancy. Tom’s family was Irish but had moved to Scotland during the potato famine and then to Canada. The family became prominent enough in British Columbia that there is a town of “Cassidy” on Vancouver Island near Nanaimo. (Phyllis states in her notes that Tom Cassidy’s father “made two fortunes and drank them both away.” I have no idea how accurate this is; but Phyllis did not have warm feelings toward the Cassidy family.) In any event, as I’ve already mentioned, Annie and Tom also had three children of their own: Oswald, Ethel, and Phyllis. Shortly after Phyllis was born, Tom abandoned the family and never returned, leaving Annie to raise four children on her own. I think I’ve already told you the rest. Just to make the story complete, Phyllis never knew her father (as Annie had perhaps never known hers).

Just a note about family names. Phyllis’s middle name was Elsie, after her grandmother. Phyllis named her first child Shelley Anne, after her mother (she just liked the name Shelley, and a neighbor who had just given birth had “stolen” the name Leslie, which had been Phyllis’s first preference). She also named her second daughter Elsie Jean, after her grandmother Elsie and her best friend Jean, although Jean is known by her middle name to most people. Phyllis named me Walter Thomas after her favorite brother and (presumably) her missing father, which I find a little strange. The name Anne goes back not only to Annie McDonald but to Annie’s maternal grandmother, Ann Davidson, who, according to Beverley Wright’s research, ran a shop in Scotland selling “trinkets and favours” to sailors from around the world. Shelley gave Douglas the middle name of Cassidy. Douglas is also the name of one of my cousins, Douglas Cassidy, one of Oswald’s sons, now deceased. Geraldine is another of my cousins, one of Ethel’s daughters. Scott and Christopher are definitely not Cassidy family names, nor is Lee. I’m not sure where the name Marie comes from, but we had an aunt Marie I liked very much. That was on my father’s side. Spencer and Tyler are not family names, and both have the middle name Cory, which is their mother’s name.

I hope you find this at least half as interesting as I do. I’m anxious to see what’s on the “Heir Hunters” dvd and will report further if there is any new information.