Learning About Mom

One of the basic tenants of Remembering Practices is that a relationship does not die when a person dies. Remembering practices are a narrative approach to grief psychology that emphasize the ongoing story of relationship. Drawing on practices of story telling, narrative legacy and rituals, these practices aim to keep relationships alive. Using the flexibility of stories, relationships can even develop new qualities and enhanced dimensions following death. From this perspective, grief becomes an evolving and creative opportunity for story development and change, rather than an unpleasant task to be worked through as quickly possible. Remembering practices provide people who are dying and people living with grief hope that the dead will not be forgotten.

In that vein, I love learning more about Mom, and who she was long before I was born. My father wrote to one of Mom's childhood friends in England, who describes Mom's love of music. Her childhood friend married Rick Wakeman of Yes, and she used to go to Heathrow to see bands, including The Beatles, who were returning from their first trip to America. She also describes was how religious Mom was, and that she never missed going to confession, though she doubts she ever had anything to repent for, and the time they climbed the Wellington Monument before the Irish Republican Army blew it up.

I plan to ask more of her friends about her, so that Autumn has their account and testimony to how amazing she was, in addition to mine. It also helps me continue to feel close to her, because I'm learning more about her.