Personal Musings: Rediscovering Who Our Loved Ones Were

Some time after my mom transitioned from this world, my dad and I found my mom's old iPhone 3S, which she purchased back in 2009.  Unfortunately the charger cables we found for that model were in various degrees of brokenness, and it wasn't until earlier this year where I finally got around to purchasing a replacement cable.  The reason why I did this was that I knew there was information on my mom's old phone that I wanted to retrieve if at all possible.  It's funny how grief works: as time passes, you sometimes feel that your loved ones are slipping away on multiple fronts, and you want to do whatever you can to hold onto whatever is left.

But here's the thing: there are always new things to learn and discover about your loved ones who have died, no matter how long they've been gone.  A few years back -- I believe it was in 2014 -- my mom and dad went to a reunion at a high school where her dad (my grandfather) had served as teacher and principal back in the 1960s.  One of the former students who was at the reunion told my mom how he had ridden a motorcycle to school back then, and that my grandfather had seen him riding in one day and even complimented him on his bike.  It's a minor thing, obviously, but it was an interesting little story that my mom had never heard about her dad, even though he had been gone for over 20 years at that point.

So imagine my surprise when I finally was able to recharge and open up my mom's old iPhone and find out what information lay within -- it's fascinating to discover how much of our lives are on our phones these days!  One running joke that my mom and I played for a long time had to do with comedy writer Dave Barry's punchline: "Which would be a great name for a rock band, by the way."  We took it upon ourselves to come up with creative, strange, funny names for new rock bands.  Some of my mom's ideas for rock band names included: "Cabbage Sundae", "Igloo of Ignorance", and "Morphine Truffles".

My mom always had a way with words.  Fascinated with all things linguistic, she had a whole list on her phone dedicated to collective nouns (who knew that a group of nocturnal birds was "a parliament of owls"?)  She also loved anagrams and had another list for them (rearrange the letters and "Astronomer" becomes "Moon starer").  And then she also had a list of books she wanted to read -- for some reason, she was interested in the Norwegian thriller genre.  Who knew?  As I've learned and continue to learn, our loved ones are never truly gone and in the past -- there are always new things to discover about them and the kind of people they were.