Blogs on a Life Time of What If's?

Ragged Edges

Its not that easy to put the past aside as though it didn't exist. Like it or not, it is a part of you, a part of who you are. The trouble with the past is, it has a habit of meeting us head on. The trick is how we deal with it.

I handled it pretty badly. After Mum passed, I believed it was an end to an era and it was time to move on as a person in my own right. Despite this I felt trapped in the past, unsure how to move forward.

A few years later when my father passed away, my brother jokingly suggested that with our parents gone, we need not have nothing more to do with each other. I was stunned, and so when the emails began to arrive pointing the finger at my supposed transgressions, I lost the plot.

On hindsight, what I should have done is recognised the emails as an overflow of perceptions passed down from one generation to another and hit delete. Instead, I retaliated. Humans often confuse logic, instinct and emotion in their decision making processes, balancing them against past experiences and this instance was no different.

Death and divorce are similar in that they create a myriad of emotions, the difference being, death is clean cut, divorce leaves ragged edges. I remember Mum saying it would have been easier if Dad had died because she was constantly reminded of what she had lost, rubbing salt in a raw wound. Much the same can be said of an estrangement between families, shared feelings and memories will last a lifetime.
Over the years we find ourselves attending the funerals of those we loved, becoming very aware of our own passage through time. We start to look to those left behind, who share those memories reminding us from where we came. There is a saying, ‘You don't know where you are going if you don't know where you have been’ which is very true. We are unable to turn our backs on the past because it is part of our present and future.

Having said that, I don't believe we need to hang onto the past, but use it as a point of reference when faced with circumstances which remind us of times gone by. There is going to be a day when I meet my brother again, and I know unbidden memories will come to the fore, but I am hoping I have learnt enough during the intervening years to remember that I have no control over my brothers assumptions about me, they are his responsibility.