Stolen Memories...

fiction

"...I need you to understand what exactly you would be signing up for."

"I know what I'm asking."

"I know you think you do. But...here. Let's start with this."

He took the letter from her. "What is this?"

"It's an invitation. I get at least one a year, sometimes more, if it's a big anniversary I get a lot more."

"What do they want from you?"

"To show up. To say a few words. Most of them, I think, don't realize how ghoulish it seems to me, but they want a living image of him and so they turn to me."

"Have you ever gone?"

"Once. When I was 12. It was the ten year anniversary. I didn't realize they had been inviting me every year. My mother had intercepted the letters and never shown them to me. They got creative that year and sent one to our neighbor. It was addressed to me and Mrs. Johnson didn't think twice about giving it to me instead of my mother. Why would she?"

"Are you sure they tried to do an end run around your mother? Why wouldn't they just ask her? I mean, she's talked about him before. I've seen interviews."

"Interviews of her choosing. And she doesn't do very many or do them very often. She made a decision not to become a professional widow. She didn't want us to be defined by his death."

"But she let you go?"

"Yes. I was pretty insistent and my dad said that it should be up to me on if I went to these events or not. So my mother let me go. She had Uncle Billy come along as a chaperone so I wasn't there alone."

"And how was it?"

"At first it wasn't so terrible. I had already gotten somewhat used to people wanting to tell me what he meant to them. How he had inspired them. The first few people I met were the organizers. And a lot of them wanted to do the same sort of thing, and show me pictures they had with him. And then it got to be more and more and more people. Everyone wanted to tell me a story, or share a photo, or touch me, or hug me, or call me brave. It was a lot.

Then they asked me to introduce a film montage they had made to cap off the weekend. I said I hadn't prepared anything and they told me that was okay, they had written something I could use. Uncle Billy had them give me the speech so I could read it ahead of time. Not just be thrust out on stage with index cards. Thank god for Uncle Billy. The speech was bullshit. Talking about my memories of my father and how special our relationship was and how much he loved me and how special I knew they all were for keeping his memory going the way they had.

I was two when my father died. I didn't have any memories of him let alone special ones. I don't even know if he would have loved me. I mean, I assume he loved me, he was my father, but he didn't know me. He knew a toddler. So instead of their carefully prepared speech I said that they knew him more than I did. That they had pictures and memories that I never would. That their version of him is what I had been told my whole life. I didn't even get the opportunity to form my own opinion of him. That I was sure he was all that they claimed he had been, but that they'd have to take each other's word for it because I didn't know. I didn't know him."

"Wow. At 12?"

"Yeah, the teenage attitude came early. Now when my mother says she loves me, I know she does. She went through all of that and still says she loves me."

"Okay, so I understand, you get invitations to events like these. I'm still..."

"When I was 16 for Father's Day I told my parents I wanted Dad to adopt me. I wanted to take his name. He got all teary eyed and hugged me and told me how much he loved me and that I would always be his daughter. And then he told me no."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. He told me that if he adopted me that I would lose my claim to the trust from my grandparents. That it would legally make me his child, not my father's. That would revoke the trust and I would lose out on my inheritance. I was 16, I didn't care about my inheritance. I told him that he was more worried about the money than he was me. Or I guess I shouted it at him. Then I stormed off and cried in my room.

My mom and dad gave me some time to calm down then came to my room bearing ice cream. First off he said he wasn't going to apologize for thinking about the money. That he was my dad and as my dad his job was to take care of me. And that money was my future. He told me again that he loved me and that I was his daughter no matter what my last name was. Then my mother handed me a box filled with letters. She said I shouldn't read all of them, just a few, but that it would give me an idea as to why they felt the way they did.

It was full of hate mail she had received when the story broke about her and my dad getting married. People called her terrible names, they sent death threats, they said she should lose custody of me. That my father would have been ashamed of her. That she had clearly never loved him at all.

She told me if I took my dad's name, if I were adopted, the hate would center on me, and on him. They would view it as a betrayal and come for me.

I didn't care. I was ready to walk away from the trust and face the irrational hate. But then I read one of the letters that had the address of where my dad worked at the time. I knew he had changed jobs and we had moved when they got married, but I didn't have any idea why. I had always assumed it had something to do with schools because I started kindergarten that year. Now I could see it was probably due to this.

I knew there were people out there that hated that my mother wouldn't play the grieving widow in perpetuity. I knew that there were a lot of people who thought my dad was some sort of opportunist who was only glomming on to her because of my father, but I hadn't realized how twisted some of them were."

"So no adoption."

"No public adoption. We had a small private ceremony with just family where we sort of adopted each other anyway. Nothing official, but it was still really sweet."

"Okay, but still this doesn't..."

"When I was in college I brought a friend home over Spring Break. She was my best friend at school. Not at all impressed with my last name. Not at all bothered when people would stop me to talk about my father. She was great. Until I found her taking photos of our private pictures. The ones that have never been published in any article about him. I grabbed her phone and deleted them all. She was going to sell them. Exclusive access.

She yelled at me that I was spoiled and selfish. That those photos would have paid her tuition for the year. She's not the only person who has tried getting close to me for some sort of payoff, but it's the one that hurt the most. She's the reason why Uncle Billy now has anyone who gets close to me investigated."

"You had me investigated?"

"He did. But yeah."

"And?"

"You're still in my life aren't you?"

"I'm not sure that's all that comforting."

"I told you there were things you needed to understand."

"Okay."

"There's more. But I think this is probably a lot for you to process right now. Think about it all, really think about it. And then you can decide what to do next. I never had a choice. You do."

"Okay how long do you want me to pretend to mull it all over?"

"I don't want you to pretend."

"And I want you to understand that I already knew our lives would be a little more complicated due to your family history when I asked you. But my family is complicated too. I mean don't ask my Aunt Julie for her meatball recipe around my Uncle Jerry. There will be a fight about whose recipe it really is that will make your head spin.

I know that you've spent your whole life with people telling you their memories of your father. Memories you don't have. I know that a lot of people want something from you that is tied to that. To him. I don't. I'm asking you to make new memories with me. Memories just for us. No sharing necessary."

"That sounds really good to me."

This scene has been in my head since the beginning of last week. I was thinking about Frances Bean Cobain. She's just a few months older than Katie and I've always wondered what her life must be like. She wasn't even two when her father died and so many people have memories of him. Of what he meant to them. So many articles written about who he was. All through the lense of the writer, of course. She never got a chance to know her father without that public lense on him.

She didn't get to do that thing that kids of famous people do where they say things like, sure my mother is the most famous woman in the world, TO YOU, but to me she was just mom.

And then Charlie Kirk was killed. He had two very young children. They will also grow up never really knowing him. Everything they know about him will be told through another person's lense. And the things online will be either he was a saint or he was most definitely not. But a lot of people they meet will have opinions about him. Opinions that they cannot filter through, yeah but at home he's just dad.

The burden on kids of famous people, artists, pop stars, politicians, dynastic families, is always pretty heavy in our voyeuristic world, but when the parent dies young... I just think it would be a lot.