Today our frequent guest columnist, John Paul Carter, an ordained minister who writes for the Weatherford (Texas) Democrat, reflects on how our own life experiences continue to shape our memories of our parents in his story entitled, Still Getting to Know Mother.
“How they do live on, those giants of our childhood,” writes Frederick Buechner, “and how well they manage to take even death into their stride because although death can put an end to them right enough, it can never put an end to our relationship with them….they live still in us.”
My mother, who was born in 1903, has been dead for 32 years now. But strange as it may seem, I feel I know her – and my father – better now than I ever have in my life.
After my parents’ passing, I became aware of so much I didn’t know about their lives – especially their growing-up years and ancestry. This led me to trace their genealogy and learn more about the people and historical context that shaped them.
However, apart from this more recent gathering of data, knowing my parents better has been a long and gradual process, like the fermenting of grapes into fine wine.
As the events of my own life have unfolded and I’ve had time for reflection, a deeper understanding of my parents has evolved.
“Memory is more than a looking back to a time that no longer is,” says Buechner, “it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still.”
Many memories of my mother were my perceptions of her from a child’s perspective.
Some of what I remembered was accurate but other impressions were distorted.
As the Apostle Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child…”
Only later, as an adult, when I had children of my own, did I really begin to know my mother better.
One of many unforgettable insights happened as I drove home alone after leaving my daughter Kristen at A&M at the beginning of her freshman year.
From 25 years before, my mother’s face flashed into my mind as she weakly waved goodbye to me while I excitedly drove away to attend graduate school in Scotland.
After the guilt of my insensitivity had receded, I was grateful to better understand my mother’s mixed feelings.
When over the course of our lives, we, like our parents, have loved, worked, struggled, achieved, lost, rejoiced, grieved, enjoyed good days, survived hard times, aged, and looked death in the eye, then – and only then – can we come close to understanding and appreciating our parents and those who have loved us from the beginning.
Our own experiences continue to shape our memories of our parents.
To borrow a phrase from the title of a well-known book, sometimes it’s like meeting our parents again for the first time.
And, Buechner would add, “If they had things to say to us then, they have things to say to us now too, nor are they by any means things we expect or the same things.”
Lord, thank you for my parents and our still growing relationship.
