snapshots

It has been three years since my mother died. This is what I wrote when I picked up her ashes:

Eulogy

I miss her, every minute of every day, but the grief is more diffuse, shot through with flashes of regret and bewilderment. I don’t know why she died, but she would say: why do you care? Knowing won’t change anything. 

Nevertheless, I wish she had remained alive long enough to visit Ireland, even if she resented my efforts to make her dreams come true. I wish she could see my kids graduate from college, although she officially did not approve of higher education. I wish that she could be here for even just a little while, making fun of me, telling scary stories and drinking Diet Coke.

More than anything, I wish that I could hear her voice again. But although she had a towering personality, she was shy of the camera. There are no film or video recordings, and only a few snapshots of us together.

On her last visit to New York she wanted to go through the box of family photographs. She wanted to tell me the names and stories, promised that I could write it all down. But we ran out of time. Now she is just another face in that box. The people in the photographs are all gone.

I’m the only living person who remembers this day at Point Defiance:

 

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