I'm now friends with a small group of widow/widowers in Canberra and one of the ladies in it whose partner had died suddenly a couple of years ago was remarking how similar her little boy was to his Dad and it sparked a conversation not only about nature v nurture, but also about how hard it is to keep the memory of the children's parent alive when they're no longer there.
The casual things about someone's past that would come up in conversation don't happen anymore and so valuable things are lost about what your parent was like, what their beliefs were or what they stood for.
I obviously knew Amy really well, but I lack many of the details of her growing up, her school life and things she did when she was young. To a larger degree I think the responsibility of providing this information to the kids rests with people who knew Amy when she was younger. A couple of friends have helped fill in the details a bit, but I often feel that A&E are being short changed a fair bit compared to their friends around them who spend time with their remaining family.
I learned things about my own Dad at his funeral that I didn't know and I guess that's the irony that you never realise that you have such a short time to 'download' all this information before someone is gone.
A little while ago I found this file on the drive of our laptop. It's obviously incomplete, but still lovely to read it as I can 'hear' Amy saying the words. I don't know why she didn't finish it, but her health declined rapidly from 2013 and so she probably lost energy to focus on it. There are stories in it which she recounts that I can't complete, but the love she had for our kids is so so clear. We all miss her so much.
Book Draft by TrevorHickman on Scribd
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