Healing in Memories
When I left you last, I posed the questions…
Did I find healing?
Was there closure?
I had a 5-hour drive to gather my thoughts and ask myself those questions, but then I decided I wasn’t ready to think about all that had happened in the past 4 days, so I put on my Crime Junkie podcast and headed home.
Now that I’ve had a week to really delve into what I did (and didn’t) get from my mental health journey, I would like to share it with you.
Did I find healing?
Yes, I did, but I also encountered new pain.
Everywhere I went, and in everything I did, I wanted to pick up the phone and text Mom or Dad. I wanted to send THEM the pictures I took. I had so many questions.
Dad, how did you propose to Mom?
Mom, were you scared or excited, or both, about getting married at 17?
Dad was getting ready to ship out on patrol so they decided to get married before he left, and just to set the record straight, I wasn’t born until 19 months later 😊
A friend had responded in my last Facebook post that he had been on such a journey and said, “My happy, as well as some sad memories, of my old home are forever embedded in my heart and mind. Seeing the old home just magnifies for me the fact that I no long have my father and mother.”
I felt the same way. I don’t regret going on the journey at all, but at the same time, I wonder if you CAN go back.
I did find healing in so many memories though.
I shared some of my memories with the new homeowner. It was cathartic, and I wish I could have shared more.
One of the stories was specifically shared when I walked down the hall to the bedrooms.
When we returned from California to Columbia around 1980, it was just my mom, my brother and me. Dad had a couple of months until he officially retired, and they wanted us to start school on time.
I woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw a bunch of canned goods propped up in a pyramid behind the door that led down the hall to our bedrooms.
I remember laughing when I asked Mom what she was going to do if an intruder came in and knocked all of her canned goods down, and she just opened her nightstand and pulled out a can of mace.
Was there closure?
Not even a little bit!
My brother texted me, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
I replied, “Nope!”
“At least you tried. That’s healing in itself,” he said.
At what point did I EVER think there would be “closure”?
I was recently telling Maggie about my trip, and she said, “People always look for something to give them closure, but nobody ever really gets it. You just have to allow yourself to feel and let yourself miss them. Learn how to be at peace with yourself and with the fact that you lost them both rather than searching for something to make it feel real.”
Wise words for such a young woman, but she does come from a line of amazing women 😊
So where do I go from here?
At the end of my last blog, I say, “Stay tuned for the release of my book and my mental health journey to recover from losing my parents.”
I won’t ever recover from that.
I go back to Miranda Lambert’s song. She hoped the brokenness inside her would start healing.
I’m not broken.
I look at the legacy they left behind…5 AMAZING grandchildren who are doing big things! Five young adults who will pass on all of the things my parents taught them. The biggest thing is “family”.
