Connie (my sister) and I had a few days (Sep 13-14) to choose pictures and memorabilia to diplay for the visitation for dad at the funeral home. Among the memorabilia was his Th.M. thesis on the role of the church in suicide, a pocket crest from Queen's, his war medals, and two volumes of his diary from WW2.
The next night at the funeral home, my son Tristan, was looking through these diaries and asked me why the one had Lloyd's name in the front.
Sure enough, this little pocket diary was not Ed's but his brother Lloyd's. So when Lloyd's widow, my Aunt Betsy, arrived at the funeral, with her two offspring (my cousins, Cyndie & Curtis) I was able to present it to her. She was flabbergasted, not knowing it ever existed. Also surprised that it was written in script, whereas Lloyd, in all the time she knew him, wrote only in type.
We of course will never know how dad came to have it, but I'm delighted it has finally found its home with Betsy.
RIP Edwin and Lloyd
P.S. At a family gathering on Dec 27/09, Betsy returned the diary. It turns out that, although Lloyd's name was in it (merely as next of kin), it is actually Ed's diary. Se the Jan 10 posting for a summary of Ed's wartime experience.
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And what a wonderful gift, not only to Betsy, but to her children, too, who will be able to learn something about their dad from his own hand, about which, I'm guessing, they knew little.
ReplyDeleteI would not be surprised if you learned that Lloyd gave that diary into his brother's keeping. The thing about war diaries and 'real' war stories is that they can only be shared with someone who also lived through it -- those who weren't there can neither truly understand, nor read between the lines.