Saturday 14 July 2007

Change and growth

Another increase to the family this week. Lillian Ellen, the daughter of my niece.

She is the second child to be called Lily, after my mother. And in a way it’s a bit disturbing. What does it mean as we deliberately do things which pass on the generations?

To be fair to M, the mother of the child, she was probably closer to my mother than most of her other grandchildren; and was deeply saddened by her death. Which is why I think she should perhaps have been a little more cautious about having this reminder ever present in her own daughter.

I, for example, was not named after my grandfather whose death in unfortunate circumstances had deeply rocked the family. By the time my younger brother was born they had obviously got over it and he was named Richard after the man in question. Well he has to live with that and I don’t, but I have always thought it a bit odd that if you are going to pass a name down that you should either give it to everyone, or to the eldest…but we never did things logically in our family. Any way, I am glad also that I don’t have the unfortunate reminder…I make heavy weather of it any way

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