Only Half of It
Damp. Musty. Dank. Earthy. All perfect words to describe the olfactory overload I experienced cracking open the pages of my mom’s old photo albums. As I sat there flipping through the worn and faded pages with such ferocity, trying as hard as I could to memorize the uninhibited joy I saw staring back at me, I realized how little we really know our parents.
Think about that for a second. It sounds melodramatic and crazy, but it’s true. We only get half the truth - half of their story. They had a whole treasure chest of memories stored away before we were even a thought. They had a life full of inside jokes we’ll never be privy to. They commanded conference rooms. Drank entire bottles of liquor and woke up with fierce hangovers. Traveled with friends, drank Budweiser on the beach, made horrible mistakes, cried and cried from broken hearts and broken promises, carefully chose makeup and clothes with the hope of impressing a certain someone…
Our parents lived so much life before us, and their stories are a historical kaleidoscope of memories we’ll never begin to comprehend. Knowing that they know every detail about our lives - every scraped knee from our childhood, the anxieties and frustrations of our present, not to mention our hopes and dreams for the future - it’s humbling and almost numbing to realize how little you know about the single most important people in your life.
Makes you wonder, ‘did she have a journal?’ ‘did she lay awake at night worrying about her future and which path she’d choose?’ ‘did she look at herself in the mirror with anything but love and admiration for the amazing woman she is?’ ‘did she buy those large sunglasses because of Jackie O?’ ‘was she nervous the first time she commanded a conference room full of men?’ How in the world can I know so little about my very best friend? The woman who knows me better than I know myself is a complete mystery to me…
I think it’s even more apparent in times like these. Everyone who loves her is filled with their own personal breed of anticipatory grief for the woman they know and love. A woman that is most likely a very different woman from the one I silently grieve for every day. She is so many different versions of herself; a patchwork quilt stitched together by the hands of time into the most beautiful, one-of-a-kind mosaic I’ve ever seen.
I may never share those memories with her. I’ll never see the laughter she freely enjoyed before the weight of the world fell on her shoulders. I’ll never know her carefree, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants, why-the-hell-not ways because they weren’t meant for me. They were meant to be hers and hers alone. I ache thinking about how much I’d love to know, how much I WISH she’d tell me. But I take comfort knowing that all that life lived, all the good days and bad, made her into the badass woman who, at 35, proudly became my mom.
Her story continues with me; and I’m painfully aware of how mine will have to continue without her one day. But I’m slowly beginning to realize that’s how we keep people alive forever; we take great care to continue their story though our own. And when that day comes and it’s my turn to carry her torch, I know I won’t do it with the same grace and strength she did for years; but I do promise to always keep it interesting. Just for her.