Family 1 | scully's Blog

To work on my genogram out of the therapy and advance the work, I'm gonna write about my family. That way, I think I'll be more able to answer my therapist. 

My grand-father:

I start with him because he's the one I probably know the better. And in the same time, he's the more mystery (after my real father). He was born in France, Southern. I don't know much about his family. I met his two half sisters, themselves half sisters for each others. So two of them weren't even brother/sister at all. I understand even less why he didn't want to tell me the truth. He protected me a lot from other members of the family or exterior dangers, but without making pressure, so I lived pretty normally. I realized that when he died in 1997. I was 17. I spent lots of time there until my third birthday (when I went to school). Then I lived there from 11 (when my mother died) to 20 (when I left). 

He was a sailor when he was young. Then I know he worked for the DST (RG). I know he was sometimes in mission for several days without news to his family (my grand-mother is the source). I don't know where he met my grand-mother or how. They lived in Oran, Algeria, where they had their two first daughters, my Godmother, and my mother. Then they all had to live back to France. I know they lived the war there. I heard some horrible stories, but I'm pretty sure it's not the worse, and I heard quite little in fact. I don't know exactly when they got back, but I guess it's little time before Algeria became independent. Then they had their third daughter, 16 years after their first born. 

From my POV, my grand-father was an introvert, pretty much reclusive even. He wasn't very communicative. He didn't like much conflicts, and let drop things with our family. Maybe he was wrong. He was often or in his room, near the garage, listening to music (he used to play the trumpet younger), or in the garage making up stuff. I think he was very smart because he built his own sound systems. I think he wasn't bad in physics and electronics. He wrote also. I remember once I was punished (when not in the room concerned, so by accident), while a end year trip at school. I explained to him the situation and told him I'd probably be at school on Saturday morning as a punishment, because I wouldn't write the essay, I wasn't guilty. He wrote the essay, and people knew I didn't write it because they said it was worth an 18/20 at the A-level (I was in grade school then). I know he wrote his memories, that my grand-mother absolutely wanted to take back. I wonder what is inside of these. So do my cousins. I know he spoke morse code, he had build a machine and sometimes he coded with it. He was an introvert, but in the same time, he could be very sharp in some situations, very clear and decisive, though quite calm in fact. I think he threatened my legal father several times. Once I was four, a family reunion where we lived with my parents, my legal father beated me, for something I didn't even do, in the back. I know my grand-father told him that if he did it again, he would kill him with his own hands. Once he got to take my mother out of the apartment, and me. My legal father had a cooking knife in the hand, but my grand-father didn't look afraid. He took a chair to keep him at a distance, and he told him not to miss him, because HE wouldn't. It's lots of traumas for me. But I prefer to know it. I didn't witness that precise moment, because my uncle had taken me away already. But my grand-father told me. He told me too about my Godfather who took cocaine. He talked to me too when I had my first period. A woman's stuff?

So I wonder why he didn't want to tell me for my real father. And also why he didn't want me to take my mother's name. I still have to bear (and bear is the right word here) my legal father's name. I'll never know what were his real motives. I think they were loyal. But I don't know if they were always pure. I do know he swore loyalty to my mother on her death bed, to protect me. She told him she left him what was the more precious on Earth to her. Something that's weird to me, because I don't think my mother loved me. I wonder if he knew she had told me the truth, talked to me about my real father. I miss the correlation to explain how the information sweat. I wish to read his memories one day, to understand him better. I can't hate that man, even though he kept me away from my real father. I don't know why. I don't want to live in hate anyway.  However, I need to understand. 

The last time I saw him, he was sitting at the back of the car of his third daughter and her husband. He went to spend some days at her house, in Belgium. I had asked him about that secret he hid to me, and he didn't want to tell me that time too. But he had teary eyes in the car. I was angry. I wonder now if he didn't know he was going to die. I remember one year and a month before he died, he had told me that he just had one year more to live. I was a little shocked, and I asked him if the doctor had told him so. He said "no, I just know". Maybe he had a sort of gift. My mother had one. 

6 months before my great-grand-mother died, I saw him in a dream in which I was losing my teeth with lots of blood. It was all dark, and he was behind the door. He said "I came back to take our mother". 6 months before my father-in-law died, I woke up at night suddenly, in the room I sleep nowadays, and he was there standing at the foot of the bed. He wore the same clothes he wore in the dream. I still wonder today if it was the clothes he wore on the day he died. 

Since then I shut myself to that potential "gift", that is more like a curse. I don't want to know that people are going to die if I can't do anything for them. I sleep less well since he appeared in my room, I'm hypervigilant. I'm skeptic by nature, but I've witnessed so many things. It's hard to remain completely shut. I still have weird expressions through my dreams. 

My grand-father died at 76 of his thrid heart-attack. He had had his first when I was 2. And the two last within the last 15 months of his life.