I was devastated when I heard some time later that a young fellow, probably intoxicated, stood on that bridge and heaved a rock into the nest, killing one of the swans. It dawned on me again, and in a new way, how quickly dreams are shattered and lives lost, not accidentally but wilfully and with evil intent.
This episode of the Stratford swans reminded me of my maternal grandmother and her horrific experience in Communist Russia during World War II.
Recently my sister and I have been looking at old family photographs to prepare for an art exhibit by Ray Dirks, called Road to Freedom, which honours Mennonite aunts, mothers and grandmothers whose homes were no longer safe and who fled for their lives, small children in tow. Many had lost husbands and fathers. My sister and I came across a small photo of our grandmother. She gazes at the camera with not even a trace of a smile on her face. Sadness seems to ooze from her. Neither of us remembers her that way. In fact, my sister wasn't even sure it was her. We always thought of our grandmother as a strong, very self-confident woman. When we turned over the photo, it was dated 1938. Then we knew why she looked the way she did. That was the year our grandparents had a big rock hurled into their family nest. Our grandfather, a kind and gentle husband and father, was forcefully taken from his family under cover of darkness, falsely accused by Communists of planning to blow up a bridge. He was probably tortured until he signed a confession, and was never heard from again. He either died in prison or in exile in Siberia. Our grandmother, in her mid-forties, was left with five children to support. Their beautiful farm was confiscated and became part of a collective on which the family was forced to work. When the German army retreated from Russia in 1943, my grandmother, together with my uncle, my parents and my brother and me, made her way to Germany via Poland, then to Paraguay and finally to Canada.
Like the surviving swan in the Stratford park, my grandmother was left wounded. She found it very difficult to adjust to the new way of life in Canada, especially since she was separated from all her children and grandchildren in Paraguay for several more years. She felt estranged from her immediate family, who had emigrated to Canada in the 1920s. They could not identify with her experience and the resulting psychological trauma. Often she talked about her heavenly home and her heavenly father because it was easier to think about a home in heaven than about life here on earth.
Those of us in our senior years, looking back on a lot of living, know through experience that life has its share of tragedy as well as joy, and that we must learn to accept it and deal with it. However, when it is inflicted on us wilfully and with evil intent, it is much more difficult to bear.
In the late 1950s, my brother used to play guitar and sing in a group. The lyrics from a Peter, Paul and Mary song they sang (Where have all the flowers gone?) keep going through my head. It ends with the refrain, "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?"
