If you could have dinner with anyone in all of history, who would it be, and why?
That’s easy, although I’m sure the questioner is expecting an answer like Shakespeare or Queen Victoria or Merlin. But the one person I would most love to have dinner with is my mother. I miss her.
I have a million questions to ask her, things I didn’t think to ask when I had the chance. Did she love any man other than my father? What was she like when she was a young woman? Did she ever want to do anything with her life besides marry Dad and run the shop with him? Why did she only have one child? Did she want more children after me? What would she have named them, if she did? Would she be horribly disappointed if I don’t have any children at all? Did she know that I loved her?
I was fifteen when Death Eaters killed my mother. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it cost her her life. It cost me my mother. I will never discount the power of simple bad luck, and I know there is evil in the world.
I’d like to have one more meal with my mother, if only to tell her what I learned from her death: if you love someone, tell them. Because they might be dead tomorrow. It’s a statistical certainty.
I have a million questions to ask her, things I didn’t think to ask when I had the chance. Did she love any man other than my father? What was she like when she was a young woman? Did she ever want to do anything with her life besides marry Dad and run the shop with him? Why did she only have one child? Did she want more children after me? What would she have named them, if she did? Would she be horribly disappointed if I don’t have any children at all? Did she know that I loved her?
I was fifteen when Death Eaters killed my mother. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it cost her her life. It cost me my mother. I will never discount the power of simple bad luck, and I know there is evil in the world.
I’d like to have one more meal with my mother, if only to tell her what I learned from her death: if you love someone, tell them. Because they might be dead tomorrow. It’s a statistical certainty.