Insight: I wish I could understand my own family (BSL)

I didn’t expect my Grandad’s funeral to be the place where this realisation hit me.

Funerals are meant to bring clarity aren’t they? They are supposed to be the end of a chapter. Instead, I sat there at the wake watching strangers talk about my own family. They were saying things I had never known about. I felt a hollow, disorienting sadness settle in my chest.

The only reason I knew what they were saying is because there was an interpreter present, booked for to facilitate communication for me.

At the wake, everyone spoke confidently about my Grandad’s life, his character, his humour, his struggles, his values. They laughed at memories I’d never heard about and nodded at references that meant nothing to me. Apparently he had a very lively and interesting upbringing!

And all I could think was: How do they know him better than I do?

I was his grandchild. I grew up in his presence. I sat in his house, at his table, at family gatherings where he was always there. He would make me a drink and rub my head and do a thumbs up, but there was never anything more than that.

So in that moment, I realised how little I truly knew about him — not because I didn’t care, but because I was never given access.

My family never learned to sign.

Instead, I learned to lipread. I learned to guess and fill in blanks. I nodded at the right moments and smiled when others laughed, even when I didn’t know why. At family gatherings I learned to watch faces constantly, scanning for meaning, terrified of missing something important or doing something wrong.

But people would always naturally turn away mid-sentence. My Mum would sometimes turn to me and say — “Oh, we were just talking about work” — as if that replaced all of the information that I’d missed.  I became “the quiet one,” the observant one, the child who was “so good” because I didn’t interrupt.

But I wasn’t “quiet”. I felt excluded and this really frustrated me inside.

No one meant harm, I know that. And that’s the part that makes this harder to explain. My family loved me and I know they still do. But how do I tell them I’m sad that I’ve missed so much?

Growing up as the only deaf person in a hearing family I learned that asking for things to be repeated or made clearer often made people uncomfortable. I didn’t like this, so I stopped asking.

At gatherings, I was often left alone while others chatted easily. I ended up on the sofa in front of the television and it became a running family joke that I’d be the one with the television remote.

Everyone assumed I was happy watching TV and being “in my own world.” No one noticed how exhausting or lonely it feels to sit among people you love and still feel like an outsider.

I liked being around my Grandad. He had a calm energy with a bit of cheekiness in the way he smiled or greeted me. Yet I never got the chance to get to really know him. Nobody told me and for some reason he always acted like there was an invisible barrier between us that he couldn’t cross.

Looking back I remember how Great Auntie’s and Great Uncle’s would often ask my Mum things that they should have asked me directly. Did I want a drink? How was school? Was I okay? And my Mum would answer for me, not realising that she was also contributing to me being excluded.

So the whole family learnt by default not to approach me, to go through my Mum and to leave me alone. I wasn’t confident enough to challenge that and many times I did think maybe there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t like them.

And also – maybe it’s also my fault that I never really asked any questions, but as a child you tend to take things at face value. And when I got older I’m sorry to say I did start to avoid family events and make excuses not to go. I never enjoyed them.

I’m sure my Grandad spoke about his life — his childhood, his work, his experiences when I was there, physically present. But I didn’t know. Not because he didn’t want to include me, but because no one built the bridge.

I didn’t know what his childhood dreams were, who his first love was, what his parents were like or what kind of life he thought he had.

And at his funeral, watching others waffle in great depth about his stories – that distance between me and the family became painfully clear.

People spoke about Grandad’s resilience and his humour, and described the things he’d been through. They told stories that felt like scenes from a book I’d never been allowed to read. I wished I’d known him.

I felt sad, but not just because he was gone. I felt grief and confusion and I also felt shame — as if I had failed as a grandchild. I didn’t know him and to tell the truth, he didn’t really know me.

But honestly, I was never given the tools to know him.

Realising this made me angry inside. I felt angry at a system where responsibility was always placed on me to adapt and to cope. I felt angry that no one thought learning to sign might matter — not just for communication, but for our relationships.

It also made me mourn something intangible: the conversations we never had. The questions I never asked because it was too hard. The stories he might have told me directly, in a language I could fully understand.

I wondered who he might have been to me if communication hadn’t been a barrier. I wondered who I might have been in my family if I’d been fully seen.

There is a particular loneliness in realising you were present but not included. That you shared DNA, meals, holidays, celebrations — but not understanding. It really hurts that strangers (like their neighbours) can paint a fuller picture of your own relative than you can.

I don’t want to blame anyone but I’m writing this because this kind of loss is invisible. Deaf children in hearing families are often expected to adapt quietly without complaint. We are praised for coping, for being resilient, for “managing so well.” But coping is not the same as belonging.

At my grandad’s funeral, I grieved twice. Once for my actual Grandad and secondly for the relationship I wished we had. The fact that I didn’t know him. Not really.

I wish I could understand my family — not just their words, but their stories, their histories, their shared memories. I wish that back when I was born access had been seen as essential, not optional and that somebody had told my family to learn BSL and educated me on speaking up for myself.

And I wish it hadn’t taken a funeral to realise how much I have been missing.

This blog has been written anonymously as part of the Insight series – created by Assistant editor Rebecca A Withey.

If you have a story, experience or viewpoint you would like to anonymously share please email Rebecca on  rebecca@rawithey.com

Image courtesy of Pexels