The Questions I Never Asked

The questions never asked have no answers, and I am left wondering. It occurs to me now, far too late, that curiosity ripens after the funerals.

Granddad, Were you always a Presbyterian, or did you choose your faith the way you chose your hat: practical, inherited, unquestioned? What was your greatest disappointment? When did you feel most successful, in the students you taught, the bank you started, a sermon you heard, a child you raised?

Grandmother, What was the best thing you ever experienced? Was your heart ever broken, and if so, by whom? How did you feel about the effects of polio? About swinging your strong arms from wheelchair to bed to bathtub without complaint? Did your mother teach you at home, or did life do the schooling? What did you fear most in the dark?

Dad, What brought you the biggest joy: work, family, drinking, friends? How many children did your extramarital exploits produce?

Mother, Did you prefer marriage or being single? Were you afraid of dying? If you could change one thing in your life, what would it be?

These questions live with me now, rattling like loose change in a coat I no longer wear.

When you were here, I asked about dinner, about the weather, about who was coming for Christmas. I never asked about regret. About loneliness. About triumph. About the dreams that went unspoken and the ones that quietly died.

I didn’t know to ask those questions. Or perhaps I was afraid of the answers. Maybe I assumed there would always be time. There wasn’t.

Now I piece you together from fragments, stories told secondhand, photographs fading at the edges, the shape of your hands, the way you laughed or did not laugh. I inherit your silences along with your names.

I long to know what hardened you and what softened you. What you forgave. What you never did. What you left unfinished.

Questions never asked have no answers.

And I am left to wonder.

Little 

Voice