Last year for Veterans Day, I posted about my maternal grandfather and his time in Georgia during the Vietnam War. Though I explored a bit of my grandfather’s life during that time through some of the memorabilia, photos and records that I had inherited of his, there was much left to learn about his time there. Unfortunately, since my grandfather passed away in 2020, there was a lot he took to the grave with him. Mostly, the stories of his time there, the emotions he would have felt while serving, and his ultimate return to Puerto Rico.
When he passed five years ago, my mother and I flew to Puerto Rico to arrange his funeral and to take care of his belongings in his apartment. As a genealogist, this was going to be a very important time for me because it would allow to bring back things that I wanted to hold on to from his life in order to remember him. I remember being super bummed out when I learned of his death because I had not gotten a chance to record my grandfather’s voice before he passed away – it was on my list of “things to do” the next time I visited him but sadly the pandemic hit and he passed away during that time.
There was one particular poem I wanted to record of my grandfather’s. In his free time, my grandfather wrote poetry about Puerto Rico, its future potential liberty, and other things related to his own life – mainly, the passing of his mother with whom he was very close. My grandfather had recited the poem to me one day while we were on the beach and in the moment I did not even think about recording him. So when he suddenly passed, I thought back to this memory and the fact that this poem would be lost forever.
In a weird happenstance/coincidence of life we had found a tape recorder in my grandfather’s apartment while cleaning. I did not know if the little machine was full of my grandfather’s voice notes or not and since the batteries were dead, I would not know until I returned to my grandmother’s apartment and found some AAA batteries. I was pleasantly surprised when I turned on the tape recorder.
Holding on...
Experiencing death and especially one so sudden can really throw you off. Top that with a global pandemic and the death occurring thousands of miles away on a small island, we were totally surprised when we got the call. I knew that as the eldest child my mother would have to burden most of the brunt work with arranging my grandfather’s burial. Since it was during the pandemic, we could not arrange a wake and funeral which made the process a bit easier. I wanted to go along with my mother to support her and to also preserve some of my grandfather’s belongings in order to have some of his things, potential future heirlooms. Specifically, I wanted to find anything he would have written down such as poems, notes, etc. since my grandfather happened to write a lot during his earlier years in life.
I was already fortunate that I had inherited some of my grandfather’s things via my grandmother such as his military papers, pictures, and other documents related to his life. I also had various notebooks that belonged to my grandfather that were full of poems he had written likely in the 1970-1980s when he was in his 30s-40s pictured above. However, I wanted to make sure that nothing of value (in a genealogical sense) was going to be thrown out.
So we flew down to Puerto Rico and got to work on arranging his burial and emptying out his apartment. In the back of my mind I hoped that I could find some reference to the poem my grandfather had recited on the beach that one day seeing as how it was not in one of the books I already possessed. I imagined it was a more recent poem and thus did not make its way into my grandfather’s earlier writings.
Finding treasure
While going through my grandfather’s things I set aside things that were of interest to me: CDs, jewelry, and other items that might one day serve as familial heirlooms. I do not know exactly where in his apartment we found the little recorder, as I was outside throwing away/cleaning up some things, but my mother was aware that I was looking for anything that could be of genealogical value to me and I was totally surprised when she showed me what she had found.
“Mira”, she said. Look. And in that moment my heart both dropped and soared. She had found a small gray tape recorder belonging to my grandfather. My heart dropped because I figured it could easily be empty and yet soared because knowing my grandfather, there had to be some sort of recording on there. We continued to clean the apartment and set aside the recorder for safekeeping. Since the batteries were dead I could not find out what was on it.
We headed back and I immediately got some AAA batteries to try out the voice recorder. I was excited and yet nervous about what was on it. Many of the initial recordings were just of songs from the radio. One of them was of the coquí frogs of Puerto Rico and so I thought there was nothing of importance on it. As I kept clicking I realized that these earlier recordings were of my grandfather trying out the recorder (and likely he did not know how to erase them) because as I kept listening I was happily surprised to hear my grandfather’s voice. On the recorder I ended up documenting a short introduction of my grandfather and 16 poems read aloud by him. Some I had recognized from the books I had acquired earlier on in my late 20s and some were new to me. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that one of the 16 poems included the one my grandfather had recited to me on the beach some years back. Luck was on my side that day.
Remembering...
This past January 27 would have been my grandfather’s 81st birthday. Sadly, as time goes on we know that the memories of people begin to fade. One of my biggest fears is forgetting the voices of the people in my past, especially of my ancestors who I have gotten to know but did not spend much time with. For example, my paternal grandmother passed away when I was just six years old and so I had very limited interactions with her when it came to talking (think deep conversations and not just hi/bye/how are you). I cannot fully make out my grandmother’s voice in my head, I can hear her pitch and her intonation in Spanish but not necessarily full sentences or words. Luckily though, my family recently digitized a bunch of film from the 1990s and on there we found my paternal grandmother talking to different members of our family.
When I saw the video I thought, “ah, that’s abuela’s voice!” but without the video recordings, I found myself struggling to make out her uniqueness. Luckily, finding my grandfather’s recorder will help me to preserve his voice and memory that much longer. On my last trip to Puerto Rico I also recorded my maternal grandmother speaking about her life in order to beginning preserving the memory of those still alive.
It is definitely a bit morbid to think of the death of those we love, but working with genealogy 20 (now going on 21) years I find that a lot of people are full of regret when it comes to these sort of things. I wish I took my photos, I wish I had asked those questions, I wish I had taken some notes, etc… (I might have to write a post about Bad Bunny’s new album “dTmF” and its connection to genealogy). My goal is to tackle this issue head-on by actively speaking to my elders, taking the necessary photos, and asking the right questions. Equally, getting as many members of the elder generation involved in genetic testing to preserve them in other genealogical ways as well.
Though my grandfather is no longer with us, I am eased by the thought that I have items that once belonged to him, poems written by his hand, and now recordings of his voice from the time he spent on this Earth with us. It helps to calm the mind and soul a bit knowing that we can hold on to the memories of our loved ones when they’re gone.
Make sure to do the same for those that you love. ❤️
Cover Photo Source: Carlos M. Correa, Fort Gordon (Augusta, Georgia); privately held by Luis Rivera; Digital image, created 29 November 2024 by Luis Rivera and currently held by author.