I didn't like how much power one name had acquired over my thoughts.<\/p>\n
Wayne.<\/p>\n
Before I met with Carol, it had been a name in a letter.<\/p>\n
Now it was connected to questions about the settlement, the attorney, and the insurance company.<\/p>\n
I still didn't know why.<\/p>\n
That uncertainty was beginning to wear on me.<\/p>\n
I wanted to reach a point where I could sit down and read my mother's letter without wondering what Carol had seen in it.<\/p>\n
I wanted to remember my mother without questioning every choice she had made.<\/p>\n
I wanted to stop feeling as though I had missed something important.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't force myself back into the certainty I had before.<\/p>\n
Too much had changed.<\/p>\n
Not in the facts I knew.<\/p>\n
In the way I understood them.<\/p>\n
I had always thought that the past became easier to live with as time passed.<\/p>\n
For some things, that was true.<\/p>\n
Memories softened.<\/p>\n
Pain became less immediate.<\/p>\n
You learned to carry what had happened without thinking about it every hour.<\/p>\n
But time could also make details harder to recover.<\/p>\n
You forgot names.<\/p>\n
You misplaced documents.<\/p>\n
You remembered conclusions without remembering the conversations that had led to them.<\/p>\n
That was what had happened to me.<\/p>\n
I had lived with the settlement long enough to forget how little I knew about it.<\/p>\n
I couldn't change that now.<\/p>\n
I could only stop pretending my memory was complete.<\/p>\n
I returned to the list of questions I had written.<\/p>\n
The first was simple.<\/p>\n
Why had Wayne's name made Carol stop reading?<\/p>\n
I couldn't answer that.<\/p>\n
The second was about the settlement.<\/p>\n
Why had she immediately wanted to know who had represented me and which insurance company had paid?<\/p>\n
I couldn't answer that, either.<\/p>\n
The third question concerned my mother.<\/p>\n
Had she ever discussed the settlement with Carol?<\/p>\n
I had no reliable answer.<\/p>\n
The list looked short.<\/p>\n
It didn't feel short.<\/p>\n
Each question opened into others.<\/p>\n
If Carol knew something about Wayne, what did she know?<\/p>\n
If the settlement mattered to her, what connection did she see?<\/p>\n
If my mother had known something about the settlement, why had she left me a letter rather than explaining it directly?<\/p>\n
And if she had not known, why had she kept the letter?<\/p>\n
I had to remind myself that these were questions, not conclusions.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether all the pieces belonged together.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether some of them were unrelated.<\/p>\n
I couldn't assume that my mother's reasons were the same as Carol's.<\/p>\n
I needed to keep that distinction clear.<\/p>\n
I was grieving.<\/p>\n
I was also curious.<\/p>\n
Those feelings were becoming tangled, and I didn't want either one to take control of my judgment.<\/p>\n
I thought about the moment I had first opened the tin.<\/p>\n
I had expected something personal.<\/p>\n
Perhaps a memory.<\/p>\n
Perhaps a few words from my mother that would help me feel close to her.<\/p>\n
Instead, I had found a letter that sent me searching through parts of my past I had neglected.<\/p>\n
I couldn't say whether that was what she intended.<\/p>\n
But I couldn't ignore the possibility.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether she had spent time deciding what to leave me.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether she had considered telling me more.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether the note was the only explanation she felt able to provide.<\/p>\n
Those thoughts made me sad.<\/p>\n
There was no way to know what she had been thinking.<\/p>\n
I couldn't ask her to clarify a sentence or explain a decision.<\/p>\n
I couldn't tell her that the letter had left me confused.<\/p>\n
I couldn't ask whether she had expected me to understand its significance immediately.<\/p>\n
I could only work with what she had left.<\/p>\n
That was one of the hardest parts of losing someone.<\/p>\n
You were left with their words, their belongings, and your own memories.<\/p>\n
You could study those things for hours.<\/p>\n
You could still never know everything they had meant.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to turn my mother's memory into an investigation.<\/p>\n
I wanted to understand what she had done without assuming the worst about why she had done it.<\/p>\n
That meant being patient with the unknown.<\/p>\n
I put the list aside.<\/p>\n
I needed a break from thinking about Wayne and the settlement.<\/p>\n
For a little while, I tried to focus on ordinary things.<\/p>\n
I answered messages.<\/p>\n
I dealt with responsibilities that had nothing to do with the letter.<\/p>\n
I went through parts of the day without consciously thinking about the meeting.<\/p>\n
But the questions kept returning.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they came back when I was doing something simple.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they returned because I remembered Carol's expression.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I thought about the settlement papers I couldn't find.<\/p>\n
Each time, I reminded myself of the same thing.<\/p>\n
I didn't have enough information to decide what had happened.<\/p>\n
That was not a satisfying answer.<\/p>\n
It was the only honest one.<\/p>\n
I had to accept that I might not learn everything at once.<\/p>\n
I might have to speak to Carol more than once.<\/p>\n
I might have to find records that had been stored away for years.<\/p>\n
I might discover that some details could no longer be recovered.<\/p>\n
I didn't know.<\/p>\n
For now, I could keep looking.<\/p>\n
I could keep asking questions.<\/p>\n
And I could refuse to let my fear of an uncomfortable answer become an excuse to stop.<\/p>\n
That was the promise I made to myself.<\/p>\n
I wasn't promising that I would uncover a secret.<\/p>\n
I wasn't promising that I would prove anyone wrong.<\/p>\n
I was promising that I would stop pretending I understood something I had never properly examined.<\/p>\n
There was a difference.<\/p>\n
I wanted the truth, whatever it turned out to be.<\/p>\n
I also wanted to be fair to the people involved.<\/p>\n
Those two things would have to remain together.<\/p>\n
I thought again about Carol's first question.<\/p>\n
She had wanted to know whether my mother had told me to bring the tin.<\/p>\n
At the time, I had been confused by the question.<\/p>\n
Now I wondered whether Carol had expected the tin to appear for a reason.<\/p>\n
I couldn't know that.<\/p>\n
I had to be careful not to make more of her words than they supported.<\/p>\n
Still, I remembered how she had looked at the container before I explained anything.<\/p>\n
That moment remained in my mind.<\/p>\n
I had thought I was bringing her a letter.<\/p>\n
Perhaps, to Carol, I had brought something else as well.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what.<\/p>\n
And until I did, I would have to live with the uncertainty.<\/p>\n
I didn't like how much power one name had acquired over my thoughts. Wayne. Before I met with Carol, it had been a name in a letter. Now it was … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40153,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40133\/revisions\/40153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}