A Piece of the Puzzle

While flying to Montreal last week (another post for later this week), I read something in a book that truly hit home.

It was pretty much a cheesy love story. The kind that I buy when I am traveling because they are light and funny and make the trip more fun.

But in this one there was a scene where the heroine is talking to her hero and finds out that he had met her mother (who had died in a car accident years before) when he was a young boy. He begins to tell her the story of how he had changed her mother's tire by the side of the road and how wonderful her mother had treated him.

In the middle of the story, he stopped... He apologized for talking about something that was obviously painful for her to discuss...Her Mother. He that he hadnt meant to make her sad.

However, she looked at him and said, "You didnt. You gave me a little piece of her that I did not have before. It's comforting to have those little pieces, those little pictures that I can visualize."

How True.

Reading this was very impactful. More than I would have thought.

In the past month, 2 different childhood friends (for 2 totally different reasons) have posted stories for me on Facebook about my mom. They were 2 stories that I didn't know before and when I read that paragraph I realized why they meant so much to me. They were pieces of the puzzle that makes up my mother.


I can now see my mom introducing a teenage boy to Fleetwood Mac  by giving up one of her precious cassette tapes of them and making him promise to listen to. He did, and still loves Fleetwood Mac to this day. I remember how all the boys I went to school with loved her. She was always so young at heart.

And when she was just learning to take pictures, I can now see her her letting my neighborhood friend put vaseline on her lips to make them shiny (which her own mom did not do) while mom took photos of her and made her feel like a supermodel.   I always hated letting her take my pictures.

Those are pieces of her that I did not have.

Over and over the families that I work with tell me how hard it is for them when people stop talking about the child they have lost. People mean well, and I'm sure, feel like these families might not want to be reminded. But the truth is that we live with the death of our loved ones every day. Not talking about it doesnt make it any easier.

If anything, the stories only help.

Even 4 years later.

So thank you so much to Shane and to Misti for sharing your stories.