The way you remember or dream about your loved ones - the ones who are gone - you can't stop their endings from jumping ahead of the rest of their stories. You don't get to choose the chronology of what you dream, or the order of events in which you remember someone. In your mind - in your dreams, in your memories - sometimes the story begins with the epilogue.John Irving
About This Quote
This one really hits home for me. I've been thinking a lot about my own family and the way my mind is trying to arrange the stories of their lives in order to make sense. In some ways it's a difficult thing to think about - my mother, who died when I was twelve, has always been with me - but when I was younger, it was almost impossible to imagine not having her around any more. And now when I think of things from her life, I'm surprised by how many of them I can remember.
When she was a teenager she had a friend named Claire. They got into a fight and Claire cut her hand in a terrible accident. Years later when my mother went through a tough time at school, she told me that she thought about the accident every day, but never talked about it with anyone else.
She never forgave herself for what happened to Claire and explained that she believed that no one could forgive herself for something like that. I have always been aware of my mother's love for me, but until recently I didn't realize how much my own memories of her have come to connect with certain moments in her life that were sometimes difficult or painful. At another time, she told me that she wanted to be an actress - even though she knew everyone would tell her they hated the idea - and never gave up on that dream. She told me that she had no confidence in herself as an actress and started classes at drama school at sixteen because her mother said she would hate it if she didn't try it. My mother had always been an incredibly strong woman who had struggled with depression and anxiety during her life.
But even though she continued to struggle with these issues over the years, I never thought of her as weak or self-loathing and I guess knowing what we know now about how depression and anxiety can interfere with some people's ability to know themselves well enough to make choices like going to drama school or deciding what job or field they want to do in the world, we can't help but wonder why someone like that would ever choose such an unconventional path anyway.
Source: Avenue Of Mysteries
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