Memories

I have no memory of my mother.  She was killed in a car accident 18 months after I was born.  Until this year, I had seen only still photographs of her, mostly formal portraits taken to further her modeling career.  They were beautiful but austere.  I had no idea what our interaction as mother and daughter had been; no clue as to the relationship she had with her father, my grandfather, who had divorced my grandmother when my mother was a teenager.

The footage I received was a miraculous gift and more clearly defined each of these questions.  Film is so much more telling than a still picture.  I like to think now that the fine relationships I have with both my daughters are perhaps what I might have had with my mother, had she lived.  And, it makes me realize what a wonderful thing it is to love and be loved, no matter when it happens—no matter how brief.

The following is something I edited from the footage I received (God bless iMovie).  I posted it to YouTube so that my relatives, those who knew my mother and those who did not, could get to know her better.

~ by rfgainey on August 10, 2009.