Remembrance

In writing a post about my oldest brother, I mentioned having to accept how wildly different his experience of family & personal life events were from mine.  It is a lack of memories that leaves me no other option but to accept it because, as I wrote, "my brother remembers what he remembers."

It seemed strange, writing that, since it gave me such deep personal pain - the worst I've ever felt - when Mom used basically the same phrase in describing Mim.  

This dates back many years.  I was around 38 or 39, married for a couple years, if that.  As I had for what felt like eons, was once again endeavoring to get the three of us - Mom, Mim, myself - together with a family counselor to figure out better ways to communicate & connect. 

For all those years, Mim had pledged "maybe someday, but not now" we'd get the help I'd long advocated.  I finally started pressing when she at last - in her 40s - had her masters, a car of her own, a car of her own, and a traditional job of her own.  Mom brought up the proposed counseling with Mim, who brushed aside Mom's assertion that she at the least owed me a sense of loyalty for all I'd done for her over the years - according to Mom, she said that, yes,  I'd offered to do things for her, but that she had never taken me up on the offer.

When Mom told me that, I was stunned - and totally unprepared for what was about to come.

I asked her the logical (to me) question, "What did you say to that?"

"What could I say?" replied Mom.  "If that's what she remembers, that's what she remembers."

Almost word for word what I wrote about Peter.  So why was it so devastating when Mom said it & seemed so logical when I wrote it about him?  

Honestly, it happened so long ago, and I was such a different person, more dewy eyed & hopeful that the hopelessly broken could be miraculously fixed ~.

I asked Mom the logical (to me) question, "What did you say to that?"  

"Well," Mom answered, "If,, that's what she remembers, that's what she remembers."  

It crushed me at the time, hearing her say that, but here it is, over 20 years later, and I've written the same thing about Peter.  "He remembers what he remembers." 

They all did.  We all do,  all of  us human beings.  We remember what we remember.  Was interested, after writing the last post, that I mentioned that my brother remembers what he remembers – can be stunned by it, but there’s no way I can change it.

That phrase  - he remember what he remembers – kept niggling at me.  Why did it seem so familiar?  Oh, right – that was, word for word, what Mom said that after Mim said she "the past is the past & the family no longer exists as a unit."  When (in her recounting to me) Mom said I at least deserved some sense of loyalty because of all I'd done for her (Mim) over the years, my sis was reported as saying, "What things?  She (me) offered, but I never took her up on them."

Stunned, I asked Mom the logical (to me) question, "What did you say to that?"  

"Well," Mom answered, "If that's what she remembers, that's what she remembers."  

It crushed me at the time, hearing her say that, but here it is, over 20 years later, and I've written the same thing about Peter.  "He remembers what he remembers." 

They all did.  We all do,  all of  us human beings.  We remember what we remember.