Ghostwriting: A Mother’s Legacy
Writing Sample – A Mother’s Legacy
Kate Jonuska • Names and details changed
I was well on my way to adulthood when I found out something that completely changed my mother’s basic identity—her name. That’s right. I had been walking my way through life thinking that Laura Simpson was my mother when, in fact, her legal first name was Inez. She had always used her middle name of Laura and simply never thought the fact important enough to advertise. My mother, I have learned, does a lot of things simply, quietly and without fanfare.
I suppose she was right. Educating your children about your legal name is not a pressing, important concern. My realization of the error later in life, however, made me begin asking questions. Did I really know my mother? Where did she come from physically and where did her thoughts, character traits and actions come from as well?
We were spending a bit of time together during a family trip to Las Vegas when my mother spoke about the natural distance between generations. She and my father, she told me, had made it a big priority to raise their children to be independent and self-reliant. “We did such a good job,” she said, “that you guys never really needed to come back for anything.”
We chuckled over the truth of her statement. Inside my head, though, the wheels began to turn. If a child never returns to his parents as an adult, he can never gain perspective and knowledge about his parents’ true identities. If he never understands where they come from, he also leaves an entire part of himself undiscovered. He leaves a gap in the self he passes onto his children in turn. After all, here I was a full-grown man before I knew the truth of my mother’s name!
It was obvious to me that my mother retained her sharp memory, sharp in places where mine had already grown dull. It was also obvious that time is a finite commodity in this world. We lost my father, Lloyd Simpson, in 2003 and that event drove home the transitory nature of life to our entire family. I knew our family needed to take advantage of my mother’s memory and the time we were given by preserving her legacy. I felt it necessary that we—her children—became educated about that legacy and that we introduce her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the great-greats to come to her memory as well.
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