When I began talking about shut out stories, it didn’t take but a minute before the person I was talking to could come up with a shut out story of their own.
Elizabeth, a mature woman from England, told me about her being a precocious child and wanting to know why her grandmother’s last name didn’t match her father’s last name. Nobody would tell her anything about her paternal grandfather. Her father had died in the war, WWII, fighting as a soldier for the British Army, and her mother just would not answer any questions on the subject. Whenever Elizabeth would bring it up, faces would go sour, and she’d be told to drop it. The subject would change or her mother would abruptly leave the room. Well, Elizabeth wouldn’t drop it. The man was her blood; she felt she had every right to know about him. She couldn’t fathom why he would be an unspeakable subject. As she matured, her imagination conjured countless dire scenarios to justify her family’s stonewalling. Was he captured in the war? A deserter? A convicted felon? A murderer, rapist or thief? Dead or alive, in the grave or in prison, she didn’t know.
Again, being intelligent and clever, Elizabeth would argue with her mother, and frequently those fights would include taunts to spill the beans about Granddad. The cheekier Elizabeth got, the less inclined her mother became to explain her position. The standoff was infuriating for both of them.
It wasn’t until Elizabeth’s mother died and there was only one remaining relative, an auntie, that she finally got her answer. She asked her auntie to please, please tell her what she knew. Why could they not talk about her paternal grandfather? The elderly aunt then agreed to tell her what she knew. She made a pot of tea and set the stage for a dramatic reveal. Prepared to break the distressing news, Auntie sat next to Elizabeth, lowered her voice, and said, “Okay dear, I’ll tell you. Your grandfather was Irish.”