If you could relive any day of your life, which one would it be? Why?
I posed this question on social media the other day.
After giving it some thought, I came up with a day that would get me the most bang for my buck: I’d choose a day during the two-month stretch of 2006 where I had both a mom and a dad.
It’s not for the purely sentimental reasons you might think.
See, my dad left our family when I was three months old, after my mom told him it was either the drugs or us. (He chose the drugs.) In the years that followed, she did an incredible job of not painting him the villain, but instead explaining addiction as a disease that clouds the power of choice. This is a truth I later learned first hand, but I still grew up with a subconscious belief that we just hadn’t mattered enough to stay.
He called a few times after leaving, but somewhere around my third birthday the calls completely stopped. We presumed him dead, and when others asked about his absence I’d always say, “you can’t miss what you never had!” This felt true at the time.
And then one day…he called.
Turns out he was alive, he’d been living in Florida, and he was now dying of throat cancer. He said he wanted to die at home, and though I couldn’t have picked my dad out of a line up, apparently home was near us…his family.
My dad - sometime in the late 1070s
By the time he finally arrived in town (New Year's Eve 2006) the cancer had ravaged his body. He was emaciated and hunched over: a shell of a human. But when I walked into the room where I met him, it was like looking into a mirror. We had the exact same eyes.
My brother wanted nothing to do with him, but in the next few months I visited Jim (my dad) every single day. I brought him photos of us at different ages, wrote captions to explain the photos, and essentially gave a crash course in “here’s what you missed in the last twenty years.”
If I was aware of any pain I felt toward him, I bypassed it completely. Instead I embraced the idea of “it’s water under the bridge, I’m fine, we’re fine…let’s take advantage of the time we still have.”
A photo of my infant dad sometime in the late 1950s
Not long after our first meeting, the hospice nurse said the end was near; my mom and I sat with him as his breathing became more labored. In the days before an album of his baby pictures had mysteriously appeared, and I kept glancing at the baby face in the photos, dewy and fresh from a bath given in a 1950s sink. I looked at the shell of a man in front of me, then back at the baby.
He died that day, on February 12th 2006. I knew him 43 days.
This period of time was actually one of the most painful parts of my life, and in many ways I can directly link my own spiral into addiction to the confusing grief I felt after losing a parent I barely knew.
Why then, when there are so many beautiful days to choose from, would I choose to relive one of these?
My answer will probably make sense if you’re familiar with me…
Because I didn’t ask him any questions.
In the 43 days I knew him, not only did I not ask any hard questions, like where he’d been for twenty years, what he’d been doing during that time, or why he hadn’t ever even called. But I also didn’t ask him any easy questions— ones that might have filled in gaps and informed the answers to the more uncomfortable ones.
Questions like, what was your childhood like? What kind of a relationship did you have with your parents? What were you afraid of as a kid, and why? Who did you look up to, what was your childhood home like, what jobs have you held, what are the things that make you insecure or confident?
These and so many more are the ones that now fill the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals…but I didn’t ask any of them when I had the chance. I have a lot of compassion for my twenty-year old self, and I don’t blame her for not asking any of these. But if I could have a do-over, just for one day…this would be mine.
***
A few weeks ago, a post about the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journal went somewhat viral online. It was so incredible to see thousands of people engaging with the video and the journals, but the biggest gift was that I heard from people who already had one in their possession.
One post especially touched me:
A woman reached out to let me know that after being adopted as a baby, she’d found her biological dad, but also found out that he had stage IV cancer. He had filled out a father/daughter journal for her, and she posted a video flipping through it, pages and pages of answers about his life, himself, and his dreams for her.
It gave me goosebumps (and plenty of tears, as you’ll see in the video below.)
The truth is, actual family relationships are messy, and none of us will ever have all the answers we wish we did. We don’t get do-overs and we do the best we can in the time we have.
But after making questions so front and center in my life, I know that life isn’t actually about having the answers anyway…it’s about living in the messy middle of the inquiry itself.
So, dear reader, now I’m going to ask you:
Which day would you relive, and why?
Please feel free to share in a comment below or tag me in your answer online at #questionsyoullwishyouasked
I am cheering you on as you navigate the messy complexity of this thing called life.
xo
Melissa
“Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.” (Cheryl Strayed)
PS: Consider writing down answers for your kids or asking questions of your family members in the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals. Find them here.
PPS: Have you read any good books in March? Do you want a book journal where you can write about them? The Book Lover’s Companion is live and there are now versions for teens and kids out too. Check them out here.
