But she gave me something I didn’t know I needed.
A connection to the family history I had been denied.
What I Understand Now
For most of my life, I thought silence was how my family dealt with pain.
Now I understand that silence can also preserve pain.
My parents may have believed they were protecting me.
Perhaps they thought a young child couldn’t handle the truth.
Perhaps they believed that avoiding the subject would allow everyone to move forward.
But children notice when adults are hiding something.
They notice empty rooms.
They notice missing photographs.
They notice when a name becomes forbidden.
They notice when grief is never discussed.
I grew up knowing that something was missing without having the words to explain it.
Meeting Margaret finally gave me one missing piece.
Not all of them.
But enough to change how I understood my own childhood.
I no longer think of my life as a story with an empty middle.
It is a complicated story.
A painful story.
A story with unanswered questions.
But it is mine.
And now it includes Margaret.
We are not trying to pretend that seventy years can be recovered.
We know better.
There were birthdays we missed.
Family milestones we never shared.
Children we didn’t watch grow up together.
Grandchildren we didn’t meet.
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