“Is there anything you wish that I had known, when you were a child?”
Mom’s Question
A few weeks before she died, my mom and I were at Kaiser in Santa Rosa, for a physical checkup. My brother and I had made the decision to move mom into a memory care unit, and this was one of the steps.
She was, at that time, in and out of lucidity. Most of the time she was present and aware of her surroundings, but dangerously disoriented often enough that it was clearly time.
She and I were sitting in the lab waiting area when a poster on the wall caught my eye. I went over and looked at it, and I was so impressed with it that I took a picture.
When I sat down again, she asked what I had taken a picture of. I told her it was a really well done poster about the effects of adverse childhood experience on a person’s neurology. And since that ties in with my work, I wanted to capture it.
She walked over, looked at it, and returned. We sat quietly for a few minutes.
Then she turned to me and asked,
Is there anything you wish I had known, when you were a child?
My world stopped.
Really?
Now?
This is the day I get this question?
I could feel the truth of that fact that I had yearned to be asked this question all my life.
And here we sit.
She’s 96 years old, in and out of lucidity, and there is no way I can even think about how I would answer this.
I truly had no idea what I would say.
So I let go, and watched myself speak.
What I heard myself say was: “I wish you had known how sacred I was of dad.”
Her eyes got really big, she put her fingers on my forearm and leaned way in and said, “Oh, I know. It was all so scary. He was so hard on those boys, he would beat them so badly. I tried to stop it but I couldn’t.”
Again, my world tilted.
Clearly, we had shifted realities. In my family, it was not “boys” plural – I have one brother. It took me a second to realize she had slipped out of the present and was in her past, her growing up, with her own father.
And there was something about that moment.
The world stopped again.
There was a feeling of everything opening. All the doors, all the windows, all the portals through time…everything just one big understanding, everything making sense…or maybe not sense, so much as a state of: I could see it all. Where it came from, what it is, where it’s going, the cycles within cycles with no beginning and no end, just life cycling through.
She died three weeks later.
But that was enough.
In a way it felt like we had completed everything we had come together for.
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So now, here I am, wondering how I can approach that place with my own family.
Is there anything you wish I knew about you?
Is there anything you wish you knew about me?
How might we share these things, learn about ourselves and each other, together?
Mom,
There are so many things I thought I knew.
About me, about you, about us together.
About our family, about dad…
You held so much information. So many stories.
And now it’s too late to go back and ask.
Too late to ask for the stories, the clarification, the understanding
And to say the things
I wish you had known about me.
And, I see it.
Unless I myself do something different now, I will pass this on.
My most important people and I will go to our graves not knowing what we wish we had known about one another.
Things I now wish I knew but didn’t even know enough to wonder.
I can see it so much more clearly now.
I carry so many assumptions
I can be so darn sure
That I know
What is true, what is going on, how things will be…
And I can be so very wrong.
I wish you knew how much I love you
I wish you knew how much I would like it all to be different.
I wish you knew how scared I can be of so many things at so many times.
And I wish you knew how strong I feel at others.
I wish you knew it is not personal – it just is.
I wish we could find a way around or through this jumble.
The jumble of whatever it is that keeps us from asking.
Asking about, asking for what we wish we could have together.
I wish we could come back to the table and have another chance.
Try again, with all of us really listening,
Really hearing,
Speaking from the heart.
Taking it a step at a time.
Getting a chance to be together, grounded, aware, curious and kind.
What a thing that would be.
This is what is what WordTrails has brought into my life.
The yearning of my life, realized.
This is what I have seen it do for others – what I believe it does for those who play.
Find your yearning, whatever it turns out to be, maybe name it, maybe not – but either way, move towards it in a beautiful way.