Family Changes

On February 27, 1976, Vivian Chetister Metzker, attentive wife, dedicated mother, loving grandmother, devoted daughter, compassionate friend and city leader died from complications after a hip replacement surgery. It was a blood clot. For the surgery, the doctors took her off her blood-thinning medicine, and the medical technology at the time was not advanced enough to scan her for any. It happened quickly on a Friday. She reported having some difficulty breathing during her morning walk, lay down and shortly thereafter passed away.

For her grandchildren—my siblings and I—this was particularly devastating. We were scheduled to visit her in the hospital on Saturday. This would have been the first time we saw her since she went in a week earlier. We had made cards, bought presents, were ready to shower her with healing love. We didn’t get the opportunity. The loss set each of us adrift in her/his own way for many years.

Sadly, even though the circumstance of Vivian’s death was quite clear, there was a lot of blame that rode through the Metzker family. Grief can do that to people. And she, in particular, was the powerful glue that held the family together (and it wasn’t an easy job). For a long time, we all seemed to be a bit disconnected from each other, and we were a small family, which made the sudden apparent distance quite prominent for the duration. We did, however, continue with our tradition of Christmas Day together. Leta even joined us.

In June of that same year, my parents divorced. They had been separated since before Christmas, but with my grandmother’s indomitable will, as well as the Metzker family name and reputation as a kind of beacon, there was still a glimmer of hope that reconciliation was possible. At that time, in a small Ohio town divorce was a bit scandalous on its own. That my family was a “leading family” in the community, and my grandfather Ed Metzker was one of the city’s founders made the situation far touchier.  However, the divorce went through and later that year each of my parents married another.

These two events altered our family relationship with Grandma Eckman--Leta. First, her caregiving and primary family connection moved to her son Dale and his wife Kathryn. Secondly, as she and my grandfather never really got along, what little relationship they had dissipated. Third, my mother was officially not her grand-daughter-in-law any longer. Fourth, my mother married someone else in November and became responsible for blending a new family. My siblings and I lived with our mother and step-father (except for a two-month stint during the winter of 1977, where I lived with my father and step-mother). My step-father had four children, two of whom also lived with us.

However, my mother continued to visit Grandma Eckman faithfully, taking us along with her, as well as her own new little boy Nathan (born in 1978). When we were old enough, my sister and I would visit on our own, even taking our friends with us sometimes. After all, she was our great-grandmother, and we believed in family.