I never met my mom's dad. He died the year before I was born, in 1972. And you might assume, therefore, that he died young. But he didn't. He did, however, marry late, at the age of 34, the age I am now. And maybe that's not late by today's standards, but it seems kind of late for 1932. Now, add to that late marriage the fact that my mom was born last of three children and that she had me late—in her mid thirties—and you can begin to see how it was that I never met this man, my mom's dad, despite the fact that he lived to be 74.

My mom's mom died shortly after my mom's dad, when I was five or six. So I don't remember much about her either. But I do have some dim recollections of a woman that I knew of as "Grandma B" and I can remember the heavy blue nightgown she wore on a Christmas morning in Maryland once. And I remember she was soft-spoken. But with my mom's dad, it's always been different. He's always remained something of a mystery to me. I have no physical recollections of him. And yet, he's always played an active role in my mind, in my imagination, largely through the fuzzy, black-and-white photos my mom has of him.

I don't have a name for my mom's dad. It's weird calling him "Grandpa." Because "Grandpa" is my dad's dad. The "Grandpa" I know was only 51 when I was born. And I knew that "Grandpa" for almost 29 years. And shouldn't "Grandpa" be somebody whose lap you've sat in? Shouldn't "Grandpa" be somebody whose laugh still echoes in your ears? Shouldn't you have a personal memory of somebody in order to call him "Grandpa?" So I'll stick with "Mom's Dad." Or Clarence. Because that was his name.

I've put off writing this post for months. Because I kept wanting to be able to point and say, Look, here is this man—my mom's dad. And here is who he was. Because it felt like I should be able to do that. And I wanted my description of him to somehow shed light on me, too. Because sometimes it feels like I'm really close to him, like a part of me is him. And, through my mom's descriptions of him, and through these photos, I can begin to peel back these layers of a mystery, not only about who he was, but who I am. And I keep thinking that maybe one day I'll peel back that one final layer and I'll be able to see clearly and say with some authority that this, this is Clarence.

But instead of shedding light, the process only ends up casting more shadows. My mom will offer spoonfuls of information, things she remembers about him. And I'll eat them up. But the whole thing only makes me more hungry. And I get discouraged. Because the bottom line is I will never know this man. I will die and he will remain a mystery to me.

And I know what the problem is: the things I want to know aren't the kinds of things you can be told. They're not the kinds of things you can just receive, filtered through someone else's perspective. Because I want to hear Clarence speak. I want to listen to him tell a story. I want to know how he put words together, how he constructed a sentence. I want to watch him get up from a chair and see him walk. I want to know for sure he had the same back condition I have. I want to see exactly how he smoked an Old Gold ... or the way he held a beer. I want to feel what it was like to hear him laugh or play the fiddle or stomp and dance at family gatherings at a lake house somewhere in Michigan. I want to shake his hand. I want to hug him. I want to hang out with him. And when I think about how I can't internalize these things—how these perceptual memories won't ever exist for me—it brings tears to my eyes. Because there's a hole there. And all I have to fill it are the words spoken by my mom and a handful of fuzzy snapshots.

And then it occurs to me that, for me, my mom's dad is, and always will be, her experience of him. And that's kind of a great thing to have, as well. I may not be able to know Clarence first hand and develop my own impressions about him, but I can experience first-hand the person my mom knew and the way she felt about him. And what it meant to her when he'd come home each week from his job inspecting ties for the Chesapeake of Ohio Railroad Company. The excitement she'd feel when he returned after a week away. How he called my mom's mom "Wifey," and how it really was a term of endearment for him. And the way he looked at Grandma B and the way he loved her and would hug her in the kitchen when he got home. How he used to tell my mom she "ran like a deer" because my mom had long, skinny legs. How he rarely went to the doctor, despite his various aches and pains, and how he had a cerebral hemorrhage in his fifties and still lived another twenty years, but was never quite the same. And how one day, when she was a little girl, she waited hours and hours for him at a train station in Battle Creek, Michigan. Because he was supposed to stop there and pick her up to take her to where the rest of the family had gone for vacation. But he had forgotten, or he hadn't realized that this is what he was supposed to do. And when he got to the final destination without my mom, he felt terrible at his mistake.

Neuroscientists believe that memories aren't things that are stored in a brain and "retrieved" like a file in a file cabinet. Instead, they think a memory is constructed from scratch each time it is "remembered." And a memory is never remembered exactly as it happened. Details get added or dropped. And the more you remember something sometimes the less accurate it becomes. And I notice this with my mom. I notice that she'll tell me a story about Clarence one time and then the next time it will be slightly different. And I'll say, I thought you said such-and-such. And she will say, Oh yes, that's right. You're right. And it sort of makes me frustrated. Because how can I be right? She's the one who needs to be right. Because I want the unfiltered facts. I want the truth. Because I feel like somehow knowing the true facts will bring me closer to knowing the true Clarence.

But then I take a step back. And I remember that what I'm coming to understand isn't my mom's dad. It's my mom's perception of him. And for me, this is knowing Clarence.

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