A Long and Rambling Post

I'm looking back at old photos.  There are so many things I can see now that I wasn't able to see for many years.  I am surprised to find that even though my mom has died, our relationship, in a sense, continues to grow. I see new sides of her; I remember things she told me that I didn't necessarily hear at the time; I understand her more freely than I did while she was living.

What I see when I look at the old pictures is a happy, somewhat carefree (though I know she was always very disciplined), optimistic and bright young woman full of love for her family.  I have always had very happy memories of childhood, but my mom and I had some rough years when I was in high school and college, and those years unfortunately took years for us to recover from.  Either because of human nature or my personality, the rough patches somehow outshone the happy moments in my memory.

But after my mom died I was able to see her with greater clarity.  Almost immediately upon getting The phone call, I started to see my mom in the context of who she was - not as my mother, specifically, but who she was as a person.  They talk about "your life flashing before your eyes" when you have a terrifying experience; in this case I was losing my mom, and it was her life that was flashing before my eyes.

After my dad's dad (Opa) died, I remember my dad talking about reclaiming the memories of my grandfather in his prime.  The recent memories of my Opa were sad ones; he slowly grew old and senile and sick, over a period of many years, to the point where my vibrant, energetic grandfather was just a distant memory and not the person he was any longer.  But slowly over time, those images gave way to memories of Opa in his earlier years.  For some reason, that process came very quickly for me and I was flooded with incredibly memories of my mom from early on.

Our relationship had begun to grow stronger in recent years, but then all at once it was put to an end.  Because there is no looking forward, and because I am an analyzer by nature, the thing that is left for me to do is to look back.

Depending on my mood I see the good or I see the bad.  Thankfully it is most often the good that I see.  It's amazing how much can be learned about someone after they die, in some unlikely places.  For years I felt like my mom had