I think lost is a great word in this case, because he is all but a ghost to me, a fictional character who was written in to my early childhood history but a character whom I really don’t have any personal recollection of. What I do remember is tiny snippets of time, grainy as old photos. A breakfast bowl in the sink. Long slender bare feet on the couch. A bald “chemo” head hidden under a terry toweling hat on a car trip.
Now that I have had two children myself I find this revelation staggering. I know as a parent the many thousand moments of shared history we have had together from birth. My daughter could tell you many funny stories about our lives together, with accuracy and in great detail. She could probably even give you a pretty spot on character reference of me if pressed. She could tell you I take a long time to get in to cold water for a swim. That my favourite colour is greeny-blue. That I bake cookies for stress relief. She knows that I put the zipper end of the pillow into the pillow case first, and why (so it doesn’t scratch in the night if it escapes a little). Our life is a shared life to this point. We even have the concept of the “mama-metre”: that moment when you realise everyone in the house has gravitated to being within a metre of Mama for no reason but a desire to be close.
The thought that if I died tomorrow she would remember virtually nothing of this as an adult is shocking. It seems a major design flaw that the happiest and most carefree moments of our lives are erased from our memory, lost forever.
I have been contemplating this because of something my older cousin shared with me a few days ago. He said his most vivid memory of my Dad was at our shop, where we kept a few chooks for their egg laying prowess. One day at the shop my Dad showed him how to hypnotise a chicken. Apparently, you hold its head down, draw a line forward of its beak in the dirt, and when you let go of its head it will be unable to look away from the line. To me, this is such a mysterious, unusual skill that it opens up a world of questions about my Dad which will never be answered. How does one learn how to hypnotise a chicken, and why?
I can’t help but think, did I miss this lesson? Surely I couldn’t have forgotten it?
Have you discovered things about lost loved ones which you wish you could ask about? Do you have a thing you want to be remembered for?
Kristen Ingwersen always knew she wanted to write. It has taken turning forty, and a chance exchange with Jess Rudd on Twitter to decide to throw in her career flitting around the world, for a career skipping through the sweeping fields of her thoughts.
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My Dad passed away in October of this year. We had a really long chat the night he got home after his first round of chemo. He was a bit hyper from the drugs in his system & he talked to me more about a whole range of things in that two hours than he had in the whole rest of our shared time together. I guess he knew he didn't have much time left & if he wanted to say things they needed to be said then.
Interestingly, he didn't tell me that he'd been molested as a child, even though years ago I'd asked him if I'd been abused that he knew of & I'd told him I'd been raped as a teenager. But he did tell my mother this piece of information, a woman he'd been divorced from for almost 25 years. I can only surmise that he wanted me to know but couldn't directly tell me himself. It would have been the perfect time to have a conversation about his own experience.
I know this article is more about memory but if I could ask my dad more about his experience & how he thought it affected his life, I'd love to have that conversation. He apologised to me for being such an angry man for most of my childhood & I wonder how much of whatever happened to him affected his self-esteem, subsequent reliance on alcohol & depression.
Beautiful article, Kristen, keep writing.
My youngest is six and I would also think that if I died she'd have a huge amount of memories but I guess not. Perhaps all that additional data in the years following six pushes out the non-essential so that you're only left with the sketchiest of details. Sobering thought. I hope she'd remember the good stuff and not all the stressed out mum yelling stuff.