Just a Little Bit Cranky: A sad family tale

Dorothy Place

Sister L came and we spent two long days sorting through boxes of stuff my mom left us. We achieved huge reductions -- 12 or 16 boxes, something like that -- and made a few discoveries.

This is a picture of our grandmother, Dorothy, probably in the late 1920s, when she graduated from nursing school. She's so beautiful, and looks a little like, well, my sisters. She was born in 1908 and died at 30, in 1938, asphyxiating herself in a car on a hillside overlooking Hollywood. She left a note addressed "To Anyone Who Finds Me." It said, "Hollywood is very beautiful, at night, with all the lights, isn't it?" She left the address of a childhood friend she had been visiting, and the local police department precinct.

In family letters late in her life a relative said her condition "cast a pall over the family" and there is a mention of epilepsy, but I think that was just a guess. She was probably already pregnant with my aunt, Greta, when she married Ole, given Greta's birth date. They divorced after my dad was born, and her filing says she was leaving Ole because of "cruelty and nonsupport." In the 1930s, during the Depression, without a formal education, it would have been a tough time for anybody.

Dorothy remarried, and just a few months later left that husband and went to California. My dad was 5 when she died; Greta, who was born deaf and had other ailments, was 8. My dad had a brain scan performed on Greta after her death, and it showed characteristics of trauma, as if Dorothy may have tried to end that pregnancy.

It's a sad story, particularly for Greta, whose life was very difficult. The wonder is that Dad almost never reflected on it, became a very successful physician, and was a great dad.

So that's the story of our grandmother, just one of many found in the boxes.

There's a book in there somewhere.

My bike ride planning continues apace. I'm pretty well mapped up. I was struggling with how to cross New York state, till I found these: