As I spent months, then years, going through what my parents had left behind and speaking with those who’d known them, new people emerged, not the parents I’d known but passionate, successful, and curious individuals who tried really hard to get things “right.”

What was the correct or “true” version of my parents? Was it the one I’d experienced, or the one I was learning about as I read their letters and spoke with their friends and coworkers? Could both exist at once? Was it possible, or wise, to let the things I didn’t know about them, or images I’d never had, overshadow the ones I did? That seemed like a form of magical thinking, one that was seductive but also a little dangerous. Was accepting this new story a denial of my own? Or was my refusal to acknowledge their other personas the ultimate, immature act of disrespect?

How much could I really understand about even the most basic aspects of their worlds? I valued being able to go wherever I wanted, when I wanted. I didn’t want children. In many ways, my life was more expansive than my parents’ because I had so much freedom. I hadn’t considered that in other ways, perhaps I was stunted. No kids or marriage meant I’d experienced none of the sacrifices, joys, and deep vulnerabilities that accompany each. I’d done many hard things, but I’d never tried to do what they’d done.

I stopped thinking of my parents as my parents, and began seeing them simply as people. I wondered and worried about their relationship as I read their early letters even though I knew how their young love ended. Often I found myself commiserating with them. How does anyone get this shit right? If my friends and I were constantly talking about our relationships and entanglements, our hang-ups and fears, they must have been talking about the same things with their friends. Did they freak out or falter? Did they see things happening and wish they could stop them, then watch them happen anyway? Of course they did. People don’t “get over” things. They keep living as best they can.

The questions that sparked my interest in them, in who they were and what happened to them, had been answered. My father had experienced great turmoil as a child, was smart and intense. He took risks and didn’t want to be held back from pursuing what was most important to him. And he loved, really, really loved, my mother. My mother had an equally hard childhood marked by the absence of her father and of the love that she craved. Wildly intelligent, she fell in love with a man whose ambition helped give her a life that was full of adventure, at times better than she’d dreamed it could be.

It was also full of loss on a scale I hadn’t known and prayed I’d avoid: absent father, dead child, dead husband. Though I wished my mother had tried harder to stop drinking, I no longer thought she was weak for drinking herself to death. When I considered the pain my mother woke up to every day, I thought, “I wouldn’t want to get out of bed, either.” I felt guilty at how dismissive I’d been of her grief. If my sister and I had acknowledged her suffering as she’d wanted us to when she spoke repeatedly of her losses, would she have felt heard and then fought to get sober? What if we’d seen her the way she’d needed to be seen?

My parents experienced one of life’s worst tragedies: They lost a son. My mother was hobbled by grief that she couldn’t share because it was too hard for my father to listen. My father’s career took him farther and farther from my mother. She detested his absence and the responsibilities it forced onto her. They never had the chance to be reunited, to see if they could work through and past their many problems.

After years of feeling like my parents owed me something because of how they’d treated me, I now felt like I owed them something. I’d unearthed so much suffering and had nowhere to put it. I couldn’t erase it from their lives or my own. It wasn’t enough to know them better. I couldn’t change how their stories ended, but perhaps I could change our relationship, which was still alive and always would be.