Love Letters ...

It's been quite an emotional few days for me, and it seems for the whole country since the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado ... there have been so many things running through my heart and my head that I've been wanting to write about ... that I've been trying to organize in my brain ... 

It's funny how the Universe seems to point you in the direction you are supposed to travel and pay attention to. I've been writing about loved ones I've lost here in this blog recently ... I've been thinking about the families of those who were lost in that senseless mass shooting ... I've been worrying about my two girls and the social developments they will be ... or potentially soon will be ... making --- I've been thinking about my age and my health and worrying about how I will be able to cope with my life in the future. I worry about my husband ... his age and his health ... and how we will all be able to manage if we fall off of the tight rope we seem to be walking on ... and the whole thing scares me half to death ... but, this is where the written word has always seemed to comfort and calm ... and help me organize my thoughts and emotions. 

As fate would have it, I am reading ... and just finishing Marie Tillman's book, The Letter: My Journey Through Love, Loss & Life . Marie was married to Pat Tillman. The book describes her life after Pat, after reading the letter he left for her to read if he was killed in action, interspersed with her memories of her life with him. I am always amazed at how strong one can be when one HAS to be. I have seen it as an RN, and I see it in the story written by Marie Tillman ... and I've seen it in all of the unfortunate stories of victims of the senseless tragedies that have plagued our country over the last several years. It made me wonder how I would cope if tragedy struck my precious family ... I don't know how I would ... or could ... cope with loss of this sort at all. Even though I fear for the safety of my girls as they start to enter the social circle of malls and movies, etc., and every cell in my body wants to shield them from everything. Someone much wiser than I said that we cannot live being afraid ... we cannot live in a bubble ... we cannot stay at home and be afraid to go out to the movie theater ... or go out in a car ... or to the mall. When it is our time to go ... it is our time to go ... we cannot change that.

Pat Tillman's letter made me wonder what kind of letter I would leave behind for my loved ones to read ... I wrote something many, many years ago that needs now to be updated and revised and changed and deleted. If some unforeseen tragedy took me from my family, I would want them to have a letter from me. But what would I write now? What would I write? I would certainly leave behind love letters ... that is for sure! Perhaps something a little like this ... 

Emily Rose ... named for the beautiful flower ... my first daughter ... my first baby ... do you know how much you are loved? Nana said to me in the hospital, on the day you were born, as she watched them place you in my arms, "Now you will know how much I love you." ... and I will pass that sentiment on to you and your babies. I love your unique quirkiness ... your unbridled love of not following the crowd and creating your own joy! You are my observer ... my quiet assessor of her environment ... yet your laugh, your smile will light up a room. I am so proud of all that you have done, and are still doing ... a smart and beautiful young woman. I am confident in your future ... you can do anything you set your mind to ... you love the stage, my love ... you love videography ... find what speaks to your soul, IN ALL THINGS ... and go with it ... and you know I'll always be with you ... I adore you, my  love ... your heart is mine, my heart is yours ... I love you ...

Kristen Jade ... named for the precious gem ... my second daughter ... my baby girl ... do you know how much you are loved? I have said "I love you" to you, every day of your life. You are in my heart, and I am in yours ... for ever and ever. You are my firecracker ... my inventor ... my fearless, beautiful, intelligent girl ... there is nothing you cannot do. I love your sense of style ... your individuality ... your fashion sense ... your sense of humor ... and you have a caretaker's soul, too. You've taken great care of me ... and have lifted my spirit when it needed a boost. You've expressed a desire to become a teacher ... I wholeheartedly support that endeavor ... you've shown a love of learning ... compassionate teachers who continually learn are always successful ... and that is you, lovey ... your heart will always guide you ... I love you so much, lovey .. I adore you ... your heart is mine, my heart is yours, I am with you always ...

Jim, my love ... how do I write this? Our life together started out in friendship, and developed into this beautiful family of ours ... we have been blessed! We actually started writing "love letters" to each other ... do you remember? You used to leave notes on my car while I was in Nursing School, encouraging me along the way ... cards and letters while I lived in LA ... Love Letters for our wedding ceremony ... notes in my luggage while I traveled for work ... and notes here and there over the years. I've loved you forever ... good times and bad ... and I've always known you've loved me. How you cared for me as my health became as issue in our lives confirmed that I had found REAL LOVE in my life. Thank you for that, my love. Pat tells Marie to "... live" ... and yes, I want the VERY same for you ... show our girls our "3 Islands" ... share with them all that we have ever been able to enjoy -- music, theater, traveling --... as much as I'd want to be growing older with you, it seems that my time comes before yours, so, LIVE, and, yes ... LOVE ... and know that you are etched into my soul, and you live in my heart ... and I know that I am there, in yours. I love you , in all that I have done ... in all that have been ... in all that I have ever wanted and waited for ... my curly-haired, blue-eyed, blonde boy ... for eternity.

Oh, my goodness ... I have REALLY got to start lightening up the blog subjects! I really love exercises of examining one's soul ... but all of these purging of emotions is just exhausting ... anyone have any good dessert recipes? I'll stick to easier subjects for a bit, I think!

The Last Family Portrait ...

 

My Dad's personal story may be totally unique and foreign to those folks that live here in the USA today ... but to my family and the servicemen that lived through it on Guam, then, during WWII, it was all too real. As we approach July 21, Guam's Liberation Day holiday, the stories my father told me of that time are front and center in my mind.

• Stories of Papan Batchit, his blind grandfather, and Mama Ling, his grandmother, on their ranch before WWII and during the Japanese Occupation
• Stories of their march to Manengon, the Concentration camp during WWII
• Stories of his father always escaping the camp by swimming down the river, returning with food
• Stories of Japanese brutality in the camp
• The story of losing his mother and his newborn baby brother, and burying them in unmarked graves --- their brother during the march, and their mother during a bombing raid
• Stories of my dad singing and dancing for the soldiers

After the war, my father and his siblings, now without their mother, were divided up within the large family to be taken care of. His father remarried and started another family. He, then, died several years later, at a relatively young age, so, my father and his siblings were left without both parents. Dad was about 4 when his Mom died and was about 14 when his Dad passed away. My father and one of his sisters, had been taken in by his mother's older sister and her husband, for several years. They were a Navy family with 2 young daughters of their own, and in order to be able to continue to stay with them, now they were orphaned, travel and move around with them, they needed to be legally adopted. They got the elders in the family's permission, and changed their last names, and began a new and different chapter in their lives, with their adopted parents and siblings -- although, they always remained very close to their biological siblings.

Looking back to that time, I know we have no pictures or records of my Dad's mom ... his biological Mom ... Joaquina.

I have always been interested in genealogy and the family tree and have spent hours and hours on looking up and researching our family tree on the internet on Ancestry.com, and have incorporated and cross-referenced the records given to me from my husbands side of the family and from my Dad's side of the family in the form of Uncle Richard F. Taitano's Family Records. There is also a huge Chamorro Roots Genealogy Roots Project that is trying to help Guamanians/Chamorros with their family trees.

I had a feeling that I needed to find Joaquina ... that I needed to find her for my Dad. I knew that the 1940 Census' were being released in April ... 72 years after they had been taken, for privacy reasons ... I knew that this was the only way that I might be able to see her ... if she was there ... before the war came to Guam ... with her family surrounding her ... before they were separated and divided ...

My Dad would have been 4 months old in April of 1940. He would have been the youngest, with 4 older than him. His younger sister Connie would not have been born yet ... and the brother he lost in the war, Frankie, would not have been born, either. I asked Dad where they would have been living. He said they would have been living in either Agana or Barrigada, or they would have been down in Janum, their beach property, away from everyone, and away from the count.

I accessed the Guam 1940 census early. It was un-indexed, so I had to go through each page ... for each of the villages -- Agana and Baragada ... looking at each name for a familiar "face" in each name. I searched high and low, to no avail ... and I thought that there was no hope ... I thought that I'd never find them.

A couple of weeks later, I started looking again. I decided that I would download every single town or village in the Guam Census of 1940 and look in EVERY SINGLE page to be sure that perhaps I didn't overlook some family member. I looked in Agana ... I looked in Baragada ... and I wondered why I didn't see any familiar names. I found Grandma Garrido ... I found Grandpa Garrido! I found some of the Taitano family in Agana and Baragada. Where was the rest of my Taitano family? I decided to look in Dededo ...

... AND THERE THEY WERE ...

a whole bunch of them, all on Papan Batchit's ranch ... including:

• My Great-Grand Father - Juan SN Taitano (Papan Batchit) - 54
• My Great-Grand Mother - Rosario F Taitano (Mama Ling) - 50
• My Grand Father - Carlos F Taitano - 29
• My Grand Mother - Joaquina L Taitano - 23
• My Uncle - Carlos L Taitano - 7
• My Uncle - Juan L Taitano - 5
• My Aunt - Rosita L Taitano - 3
• My Aunt - Esther L Taitano - 2
• My Dad - Jose L Taitano - 4 months old

It was around 3:00 AM ... I screamed ... I cried ... I sobbed some more ... I called my Dad on the West Coast ... and I cried again. It was hard to put it into words ...

It was no disrespect, at all to Grandma Garrido, her sister, the only Grandma I've ever known, who raised my Dad ... who raised a lot of the kids during that time ... NO WAY ... NEVER ... in fact, there are not enough words in this world to describe the love and respect and devotion I have for this wonderful woman.

To me, it was my way to remember Joaquina ... remember, there are no pictures, no records left after the war ... no gravesite ... nowhere to leave a flower or memorium ... no place to honor HER and say, "YES, you are the mother of THESE children, the wife of THIS man ... YOU EXISTED ... YOU MATTER ... and you're my Grandma, too, I have not forgotten that fact!" ... this census STILL makes me cry, as I type this ... it's the last piece of paper ... the last record we have of this intact family ... of Joaquina with her family surrounding her ... with all of the kids with their birth names. It's like a family picture ... the last family portrait ever taken of this family when they were all together ...

I talked to my Dad's wife, the next day, after I sent the pages of the Census to them. She said that he didn't sleep at all that night. She said that he stayed up all night looking at them. It makes me wonder what my 72-year-old Dad must have been feeling while he looked at those pages ... at all of those names on those 2 pages ... with his birth name written there for all to see ...

I hope he knows what a labor of love this was for me ... what this continues to be for me ... what researching the family tree, and genealogy in general, continues to be for me ... but I did do this for him ... and for his siblings ... and for the children and grandchildren ... but primarily for my Dad ... and for Grandma Joaquina.

... and I'm still in tears as I go back to re-read and edit this ... :::sigh:::