What I Wish I'd Asked

My father crashed his Mustang listening to AC/DC when he was young. After that he couldn't hear a single AC/DC song without it bringing everything back, so he just stopped listening to them entirely. That's it. That's the whole story. I don't know what road he was on, who he was with, how bad the crash was, whether he was scared or just embarrassed, whether the car was totaled or just dented. I heard the story once, maybe twice, in fragments. And now he's gone and that fragment is all I'll ever have. He ran track and field in high school. He had ribbons and trophies. Was he fast? I would assume so based on the trophies. Did he love it or was it just something to do? Did he have a rival? Did he ever win something that made him proud? I have no idea. I have the trophies. I don't have him. His brother hit him in the head with a telephone once. That one always made me laugh when I heard it. I wanted to know more — what started it, whether they fought like that often, whether they laughed about it later. I never asked. I lost my father in my early twenties. My grandfather too, around the same time. I was old enough to show up to the funerals but not old enough, not mature enough, to have ever sat down with either of them and just asked: tell me something about your life. My grandfather built houses for a living. That's almost everything I know about him. He was at family gatherings. He existed in the background of my childhood the way furniture does — present, assumed, permanent. I didn't know how he started his business. I didn't know how he met my grandmother or why they eventually divorced. I didn't know what his childhood looked like, what his twenties felt like, what he wanted his life to be when he was my age. I didn't know his favorite food. I didn't know his favorite color. I knew his face and I knew his name and that was nearly it. The cruelest thing about losing someone before you're ready — and you're never ready — is that you lose them twice. Once when they die. Again slowly, over years, as you grow into the person who would have finally known what to ask. I'm in my thirties now. I have questions I didn't have at twenty-two. I have nowhere to send them. I think about what I actually have of these two men. Some trophies. A couple of fragments. A few photographs. The AC/DC story. The telephone story. The image of my grandfather at a table at Christmas, not saying much. It isn't enough. It was never going to be enough. But it's what happens when the people we love leave before we thought to ask them anything.

I built something because of this feeling.

It's called Memoracy. Every day it asks you one question about your life — your childhood, your family, your culture, your memories. You answer in your own words. Your family can read it. Someday, they'll be grateful you did. I wish I'd had something like it to hand to my father. I wish I'd had something to hand to my grandfather. I didn't. But maybe you still do. Start writing your story on Memoracy.