Unanswers
The second thing I felt after the enormous grief when my parents died (not at the same period of time but very close together) was this crushing feeling of having parts of my life erased forever.
You see, I don’t have a very good memory, and I'd constantly go to them to ask about this or that story of when I was a kid or a teen. When they were both gone and I was barely 26, it felt like many, many stories were lost forever. Not only about my own past but their own, my closest family. Now I understand this feeling a little better, this special kind of grief: I never got to meet them as proper adults, just as my parents. They had their own griefs and hurts that they kept well hidden from us kids, and we just had glimpses of it throughout our lives; abortions and lost partners and dying parents.
To this day I don't know how they met; they lived a whole country apart before getting together. Why did my dad drop out of college if he was so close to finishing it? Who was his girlfriend who disappeared during the military dictatorship? Why did my mom move us to her home state when I was seven and came back a year later? Most importantly, when was that photo of 2-year-old me taken?
So much I'll never know now. So much left forever unanswered.
You can reply to this post via email or leave a message on my guestbook.