Secret Babies

I remember how surprised I was to learn that my grandmother Ana Cruz García’s first baby was Matilde, born on January 27, 1907. Sadly, Matilde died on September 23, 1908, just two months after the birth of her baby sister, Adela. (See death record below). It’s amazing to me that none of my aunts and uncles, or even my father, ever mentioned that the oldest child in their family was named Matilde. We were always told that Adela was the oldest. Did they not know about Matilde? It’s seems strange that Florencio and Ana would never have talked to their other children about the first baby that they lost. By then, though, Florencio had lost three (or possibly four) small children as well as his first wife. Maybe at some point you just stop talking about the pain.

A number of years ago, I was visiting my cousin René Rivera in Ponce. A couple of his sisters were also there, and I took advantage of the moment to ask why there was a four-year gap between Lilliam and Luz when all the other children in their family were only one or two years apart in age. Immediately, they chimed together that Reinaldo was born in 1946.

“Who is Reinaldo?” I asked in bewilderment. I was told that Reinaldo was their brother that had died in 1949 at the age of three-and-a-half. 

I was shocked (and a little indignant) that knowing that I had been researching our family tree for decades, no one had the forethought to let me know about this little cousin that died so young. He was a person, after all. He had been born, named, and loved for over three years. I jumped on René’s computer, and in no time at all I had the documents to prove Reinaldo’s dates of birth and death. Reinaldo was able to take his rightful place in the family tree.

Another baby that I was never told about, but who I stumbled upon when researching birth and death records, was Zoraida Rivera, the daughter of my Tío Neri and his wife, Emilia Pérez. This little girl died at the age of ten months.  The only child that I had been told about was Emilia’s daughter, Annie, who Neri raised as his own, and who I met at a family reunion in Ponce in 2005. Not one word had been said to me about Zoraida, who was born in 1949 and died in 1950. Below is her death record.

In the following excerpt from Chapter 13 of my second book, Sebastián, I wrote of a similar situation. Sebastián had just told his father that Padre José Balbino David of Ponce’s cathedral had been the parish priest in Adjuntas some thirty years earlier, and he wanted to know if his father remembered him.

              Ricardo nodded. “I do remember him,” he said slowly. “He was the priest that baptized your sister, Antonia…and the one who performed her funeral service.”

              Sebastián and Luisa looked at each other in surprise and then turned their eyes back to their father. “What…what sister?  Antonia? We never had a sister named Antonia,” Luisa declared.

              “Yes…yes, you did,” Ricardo said. His eyes had a faraway look in them. “She was our first baby…your mother’s and mine…but she only lived for three weeks.”

              “Papá! You have never spoken of this before! How can it be that we were never told of this?” Sebastián said, speaking for both Luisa and himself.

              Ricardo sighed. “It was so long ago. We were very young and poor. I blamed myself for not providing enough food for your mother, which in turn did not allow her to adequately nourish the baby.  It was such a sad, difficult time.  Then we had Rosa and she brought joy into our lives again. After that, it wasn’t long before you were born, and a year later we had Sebastiana. Before we knew it we had a houseful of children. I vowed to never let my wife and children go hungry, and God has blessed my efforts with this farm.”

              “Oh, Papá,” whispered Luisa. She reached out to put a hand on her father’s arm. “That must have been so terrible. I cannot even imagine.  Poor Mamá must have been heartbroken.”

              Ricardo smiled wanly. “You know, when Rosa lost her two babies before Micaela was born, that brought some of the pain back. I knew how she felt. But sometimes it is best not to even talk about those things. I had buried the memories deep in my heart.”

As preservers of our family trees, we genealogists are zealous about unearthing secret babies and honoring their lives by placing them within their family groups.  It is mind boggling to think that they were apparently never spoken of, but since our ancestors had to deal with so much infant mortality, it’s like I said before…maybe at some point you just stop talking about the pain.