I am remembering being in elementary school, I think it was Grade 2, and coming home perplexed by an assignment we had to do.

My teacher had asked us to make a family tree and to go as far back in our family’s history as we could go… my friends got all excited about this project. They always talked about visiting their grandparents and some even knew their great grandparents.

I only knew my maternal grandpa.

I knew about my maternal grandma and my paternal grandparents – all of whom had passed away long before I was born – but I only knew my grandpa, and he hardly spoke any English or Armenian. So when I was really young, I had trouble understanding him. My mom had explained to me that he knew Armenian, but he didn’t speak it out of fear… and out of embarrassment that he might make a mistake. He had grown up speaking Turkish, and that was one of the reasons he believed he had survived the Genocide.

I didn’t quite understand what the Genocide was all about at that young age – and my understanding now, is still so limited as I try to grasp the horror of what occurred – but what I did know, as a little girl, is that it was a very sad time in our history as Armenians.

I remember starting on my family tree project… I wanted to do such a good job on it… so I began filling in the names and details of family members…my family, my aunts and uncles… my grandparents… and then… I wasn’t sure what to do next. The next couple of hours were interesting as my mom and dad tried to remember the names of their grandparents… and beyond that, we weren’t quite sure…

My family tree was not very detailed at all.

My teacher had told us to go as far back as we could… I remember feeling sick to my stomach because I knew that this wasn’t enough…I only had a couple of generations here…

Why didn’t my parents know anything about their great grandparents?

My family tree simply stops at a certain point. My maternal grandparents and paternal grandmother, all Armenian Genocide Survivors, were too young to remember their own grandparents… their own parents had died, some of natural causes, some as a result of the Genocide… I knew that my grandpa didn’t even remember his own birthday, so we had made one up for him, in January…

They were young children when they had to endure the forced marches out of Western Armenia…

There was so much that had been lost.

I remember going to school the next day and being embarrassed of my project… my friends had pages of information…tracing their family histories for generations and generations and generations… they had discovered so many things about their ancestors… and I didn’t know much. I really didn’t know much at all.

It was the oddest feeling… my family’s history just sort of ended…in the middle of things… and I knew it. At that tender age, I knew something just wasn’t right.

I am still perplexed by my family tree. As I try to go as far back as I can go, I only have some names, and few details about who my ancestors were. Our knowledge about them ends all too quickly…

And it still remains the oddest feeling.

Tags: April 24, Armenia, Armenian Genocide, family, Family Tree, Forced March, Generations