I cannot tell you how many people I’ve sat across from who carry the quiet, heavy weight of unasked questions. They look back and wish, with an ache that only time can carve out, that they had sat down with a parent before the silence became permanent—that they had asked about the war, or what it was truly like to grow up under the shadow of the Jim Crow South, or simply where their own bloodline took root and weathered the storms. What was it like to live through the depression for example.
I carry my own list. It is long, written in the indelible ink of hindsight—a inventory of all the things I wish I had asked my father once we were both standing on the common ground of adulthood.
For the longest time, it was easy to lay that silence at his feet. I blamed him for not offering up his story, for keeping the vault locked, for not handing me the keys to his history. But time has a way of stripping away our easy excuses. Lately, a softer, more painful realization has taken hold: responsibility is a bridge that must be built from both ends.
Shouldn’t I have asked more?
Isn’t it entirely possible that a parent waits—patiently, hopefully—for the day their child stops looking at them as an authority or an anchor, and finally reaches out as an equal? Perhaps every father, every mother, looks forward to that quiet threshold when a child steps up to ask for a “grown-up talk”—a conversation between two mature souls who have both known the weight of the world. But we so often wait for the invitation, forgetting that our silence sounds suspiciously like indifference.
It has made me a big proponent of seeking those moments out while we still can, including the ultimate one: a “grown-up talk” with God from time to time. Not a hurried prayer born of routine or panic, but a deep, unhurried communion. One where the clock stops ticking, where the endless interruptions of the world recede, and where we finally have the courage to ask the hard questions—and the stillness to listen to the answers.
Powerful.
Thanks!