Loss, Revelation, and Personal Identity

I lost my father last week and was called back to Ontario to pay my respects and to execute the will. While the sadness of losing my last parent and the tediousness of the legalities were more than enough to distract me, I found myself thinking about what the death of both parents meant for my sense of self---who I thought I was.

At least part of who we are and how we see ourselves depends upon how we understand our history and how we tell our own story. The rather mundane fact that the same event can be experienced and later recounted by different people differently suggests something to me. We usually explain how two people can have different descriptions of the same event by reference to them each 'having different perspectives.' I think it isn't a stretch of any kind to say that each can develop through different perspectives as we age. When parents die, personal papers are passed along. Remaining children share stories. In my case, it turns out that some very fundamental facts about my parents are other than I had grown up believing. I am now in the position of reviewing the events of my life through different circumstantial lenses.

When I look at the photographs of myself at 5, 8, and 15, I recall how I saw myself. But I also now, in light of revelations and admissions, see myself at that age differently. It isn't merely a matter of not knowing then what I know now, but a matter of being able to see my life and relationships in terms of how adults saw me at the time (in one sense) and being able to acknowledge my nature and endeavouring to life my life authentically (in another sense). In the same way that a book read when we are 15 takes on different meanings when we are 40, the way we read our lives can take on a new meaning. If narrative is the heart of identity, our identity is extended over our life rather than constituted by a snapshot of our lives at a particular moment.