The history of the Acadian deportation was hugely confusing to me because it gave me the image of my Grandfather Oliver in a red coat evicting my Grandfather Doucet from his farm. Best to leave all this nonsense in the ancient, colonial past. Best to forget it and get on with life in the here and now. And this is what I did, but on another, more profound level, I had already begun the long, stubborn, clumsy struggle to understand how being Acadian had marked me and my family, not just in the way we talked, but how we went about our lives. Last week, Roland's dad died in Boston.
Funerals are tough things.
You have all these pictures in your mind of the person who has died and he is alive there, smiling, driving trucks, telling stories, but another vivid reality is reminding you that this is nothing but the ephemera of memory. At funerals, these two pictures, these two realities keep colliding against each other. My pictures of Uncle Gerard are all from Grand Etang. He and Aunt Luci Mae didn't move to Boston until Roland and Geraldine had left home - Geraldine to go to Boston and Roland to go to university in Nova Scotia. Even as a youngster, it was easy to recognize the urban elegance about her, whereas Uncle Gerard was pure country.