Ted Seymour - Explorations of Truth
Once again ancestral grief rears it’s pain again through me. If you’ll recall from a recent post about bringing some of my mother’s ashes to rest with her first husband Joe at a military graveyard in France, I discovered then how much grief I can carry for something that I have not personally suffered, but […]
This Precious Meal Can I make you some fried eggs? Simple words, a simple gesture really. I eat the words, the offer, more hungrily than the eggs, Though I languor over them to slow this precious meal, For it isn’t this aging Jewish woman, Holocaust survivor from and in my grandfather’s home town of Khotyn […]
So here I am back at the shtetl. Khotyn, Ukraine, home of my grandfather and his family and who knows how many generations before him. We arrived in Khotyn, interpreter, driver and I, and knocked on the door of Srul (Alexander) and Fonya Weinstein, 2 of the remaining 29 jews in Khotin. Srul is the […]
I just read a Wikipedia article on Bessarabia, since no one seems to use the term anymore, yet if you had asked my grandfather, Bessarabia is where he would have claimed to have come from. It’s an area that has been populated since at least 2,000BC. at some point after Maurice left, Bessarabia became part […]
So now I’m off in search of my ancestry, more specifically to find the roots of my paternal grandfather Moise Zeldman who came from a town called Khotin (pronounced around here with more of an implied K rather than a firm one). The photograph you see to the left is one of my grandfather before […]
I did it. I brought what remains of my mother’s ashes to rest with her first husband Joe in a cemetery in France. (Please read previous post first for more background). It was a powerful and truly wonderful experience. What clearly stands out for me in this experience is the amount of grief that we […]
I am on my way to the cemetery in France with some of my mothers ashes. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am bringing her to rest with her first husband Joe (or Joey as she referred to him) DeRidder who died in Europe during World War II and whose remains are buried […]
Today is the day I dealt with the “Chicago portion” of my mom’s ashes. It was a wonderful experience. I drove to Foster Ave. beach where my mother loved to lie in the sun and swim and I set up a little altar. Nothing much, just a photograph of my mother and I together, my […]