later.

how come that it is often only in retrospect that we realize that a period of our life was actually rather good? or are we simply erasing from our memory the unpleasant parts and are embellishing that which was?
on the other hand some periods of my life have been so painful that i see only now how much of my feelings i had to repress in order to remain at least half functioning. funny how one can sometimes feel the real pain and despair only decades later. when my mother died i didn´t feel anything. well, yes, go course i must have felt something, but i completely totally repressed all feelings immediately. it did help me cope and survive the immediate aftermath of this event. but then gradually my inability to feel what had happened and this half-grief started poisoning my life. every relationship i had was ruled by fear of loss and a huge gaping sadness. and every parting of a partner, even for a couple of hours, gave me panic attacks. even though i was rationally aware that my feelings were hugely exagerated and totally misplaced, i couldn`t help having them.
It is only now, 23 years later (!) that i am beginning to couple the right feelings with the right events and persons …. and that i realize what a terrible sadness i must have had inside of me that i just could´t allow to let out, or it would have killed me.

and here is video number two of the "Layers of time (finding Mom) " project

it took me a while to decide that my videos do not necessarily have to be chronologically, or otherwise, ordered ...
It is ok to just make what I feel is right at that moment, a thing that is difficult enough to realize.
Two idea are at the origin of this short segment: the paralyzing request my Mom made hours before she died: "don´t be sad, Anne" ... and a letter my uncle gave me, a letter my mother wrote to her parents from Paris in 1959, during her first year at university.

Paris has always been a really important place to my mom, and we went there quite often, I always thought that I would live there one day as well, something that never happened. Apart from having studied there, we often visited "tante Jeanne", Jeanne Lemaire, who lived in a buburb, easily accessible with the RER. "Tante Jeanne" was of course neither mine, nor my mothers aunt, but somehow related to us nevertheless .... around three corners... or four.
I admired Jeanne for her travelling around the world ... she went "everywhere" and we got great slide shows everytime we went to visit ... and she often brought me nice and interesting presents.

Jeanne Lemaire

Mom in Paris, 1959