I was just talking to my Aunty and she was telling me about her grandchildren. This led her to mention in passing how easy-going I was as a baby and how quickly I learnt things, I knew this because my Mum has always said that. My Aunty said I was even potty trained by the time I was 18 months old, and that is something I never knew. That in itself is nothing major to be blogging about but it caused me to stop because it hit me then how many things there will be about my childhood that I will now never know and that makes me feel very sad.
My Mum kept a diary for years and years and wrote in them every single day until she became too ill towards the end of her life. The top shelf in her wardrobe was just full of these diaries going back before I was born. One of the few things that Mum made me promise that I'd do after she died was to burn all of the diaries. She didn't want anyone to see what she had written. I completely respected that and when I sorted her belongings out a few months after she died I set fire to all the diaries. It made me cry at the time because it was a huge part of her life that we were losing.
Today I realise just how much we lost. In those diaries would have been details of her pregnancies, our childhoods, important milestones etc etc and it's all gone. If I could go back I would still burn those diaries because I'd promised her and I would never ever invade someone's privacy like that. But I wish I could have had more time with my Mum to ask her these questions, to know the answers.
I did buy a book when she was first ill that had a question on every page about things in her past and our past and just about her life and Mum loved it, she said she was happy to fill it in for me. But the brain tumour did the damage before we got started.
I feel quite bereft just now of all the things I never knew.
