I’ve had people from my past suddenly reappear after years—even decades. I used to wonder whether that meant we were supposed to begin again. Now I wonder whether they simply came back to finish something.
Why People From Your Past Come Back Into Your Life
I believe my dead mother occasionally sends me men.
There.
We’ve gotten that out of the way.
Other mothers call and say:
“I have someone I’d like you to meet.”
Mine is dead and apparently sees no reason this should interfere with matchmaking.
Marie has never been particularly respectful of boundaries.
Death hasn’t improved her.
But I’ve begun noticing something about the people who unexpectedly return to my life.
They don’t necessarily come back because they’re supposed to stay.
Sometimes they come back because they’re carrying something I need.
We Romanticize the Person Who Comes Back
You know the story.
The old boyfriend calls.
The childhood sweetheart finds you online.
The friend you haven’t spoken to in twenty years suddenly sends a message.
The person you once loved walks back into your life.
And immediately, our storytelling brain takes over.
Fate!
Destiny!
The one that got away!
Hollywood has trained us well.
If somebody comes back in Act Three, obviously we’re supposed to kiss in the rain and live happily ever after.
Maybe.
Or maybe they’re just delivering a package.
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I Had a Few Packages Coming
I’ve had several important people from my past reappear.
Kyle.
Chuck.
Others.
Some arrived after I specifically asked my mother for help.
I call it spirit-texting.
“Mom, I’d like to know how Chuck is.”
“Mom, help me reconnect with Kyle.”
And then things happened.
People appeared.
Calls came.
Connections were made.
You are welcome to call that coincidence.
I call it:
Marie.
Neither one of us can prove our case, so let’s continue
Chuck Was the Big One
Chuck was my childhood sweetheart.
The first enormous love of my life.
We had been apart for decades.
And somewhere inside me, I had preserved a version of that relationship.
You probably know the version.
If only.
If only I’d been more patient.
If only I’d been less insecure.
If only I hadn’t nagged.
If only I’d trusted him.
If only I’d been more mature.
Maybe we would have stayed together.
Maybe Chuck was the one who got away.
That’s an extraordinarily romantic story.
It also turned out to be missing information.
Then the Past Corrected the Record
Decades later, Chuck came back into my life.
We talked.
We reconnected.
And eventually he told me things about our old relationship that I hadn’t known.
Things he’d hidden.
Things he’d denied at the time.
Suddenly, some of the instincts I’d spent decades criticizing myself for didn’t look so irrational.
My memory hadn’t changed.
The information surrounding the memory had.
That’s a strange experience.
Imagine carrying a story about yourself for thirty years and then discovering that one of the central facts was wrong.
What do you do with that?
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We Build Lives From Incomplete Information
That’s something I’ve become fascinated by.
We make enormous decisions based on what we know at the time.
Then we judge those decisions years later using information we didn’t have.
That’s hardly fair.
Young Jon-David didn’t have the complete Chuck file.
He had what he knew.
He had what Chuck told him.
He had his instincts.
He had his insecurities.
He had love.
And he built his understanding of the relationship from those ingredients.
Then Older Jon-David received an amended report.
Thirty-something years late.
Thanks.
Very efficient.
The Person Who Returns May Be Bringing Context
That’s what I’ve begun wondering about all these people who return.
Maybe the point isn’t always reconciliation.
Maybe it isn’t romance.
Maybe it isn’t a second chance.
Maybe they return carrying context.
An apology.
A confession.
An explanation.
A missing piece.
A different perspective.
Or perhaps simply the opportunity to look at the person again with older eyes.
That’s valuable too.
Sometimes You Need to Meet Your Great Lost Love Again
Memory is an excellent cosmetic surgeon.
Give it thirty years and it can do remarkable work.
It removes annoying habits.
Smooths over arguments.
Erases incompatibilities.
Improves sex.
Enhances cheekbones.
Suddenly the person you broke up with in 1987 becomes:
The One Who Got Away.
Did he?
Or did enough time get away that you forgot why you weren’t together?
There’s only one way to find out.
Meet him again.
I have.
It’s illuminating.
My Mother Apparently Agreed
This is what I believe Marie was doing.
I don’t think she brought old loves back because she wanted me to restart those relationships.
I think she wanted me to see them again.
Not through the eyes of the young man who loved them.
Through mine.
Now.
That’s very different.
The chapter of How I Killed My Mother describes my growing belief that Mom reconnected me with Kyle and Chuck specifically so I could understand that neither had actually been destined to become my permanent partner.
That’s not sad to me anymore.
It’s freeing.
The One Who Got Away May Have Been a Teacher
That’s much less romantic.
Also much more useful.
Some relationships teach you trust.
Some teach you distrust.
Some teach you boundaries.
Some teach you what love feels like.
Some teach you what love absolutely should not feel like.
Some teach you who you were.
Some teach you who you’ve become.
And occasionally someone has to come back into your life years later so you can finally understand what the lesson was.
That doesn’t make the relationship a failure.
Maybe the lesson was the relationship.
I’ve Had Help Understanding This
My openness to all of this didn’t begin with my mother’s death.
Years ago, long before How I Killed My Mother, I was already curious about people who claimed unusual intuitive abilities.
Back in 2010, I wrote publicly about an animal communicator named Carol after hearing about a client’s experience with her. I was intrigued enough that I eventually decided to try communicating with her about one of my own dogs.
Years later came mediums.
Gina.
Experiences after Mom died.
Signs.
Coincidences.
My own growing intuition.
I don’t think every psychic is legitimate.
I don’t think every coincidence is a message.
And I don’t believe every ex who texts you at midnight has been dispatched by your dead mother.
Sometimes he’s just drunk.
Discernment remains important.
But I’ve Stopped Dismissing Timing
That’s probably what’s changed most.
I pay attention to timing now.
Why did I think about this person yesterday?
Why did they call today?
Why did this information arrive now instead of twenty years ago?
Why am I suddenly being asked to look at something I thought I’d finished?
I don’t automatically declare:
SIGN FROM THE OTHER SIDE!
But I notice.
That’s the intuition I’ve developed.
Not predicting the future.
Paying closer attention to the present.
Sometimes Closure Doesn’t Mean Goodbye
We use the word closure as though it means sealing something shut.
I’m not sure that’s right.
Sometimes closure means reopening something long enough to understand it correctly.
One more conversation.
One more look.
One more piece of information.
Then you can put it back down.
Differently.
That’s what happened to me with some of these relationships.
The person returned.
The story changed.
And then I was able to let go of a version of myself I’d been carrying along with the memory.
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The Past Isn’t Dead If You’re Still Using It to Explain Yourself
That’s a big one for me.
I spent years explaining certain behaviors through old relationships.
Why I didn’t trust.
Why I worried.
Why I reacted.
Why I believed certain things about myself.
Then the people involved started returning.
And suddenly I had the opportunity to ask:
Is the story I’ve been telling myself still true?
Sometimes it wasn’t.
Sometimes it had never been completely true.
Maybe That’s What Mom Is Doing
I like to imagine my mother somewhere on the other side with a celestial Rolodex.
Yes, I realize nobody under forty knows what a Rolodex is.
Look it up.
She’s flipping through:
Kyle.
Chuck.
Next.
“Jon-David still hasn’t dealt with this one.”
Dial.
She doesn’t necessarily send people back because they’re right for me.
Sometimes I think she sends them because I’m finally ready to understand why they weren’t.
That’s a very Marie thing to do.
So If Someone From Your Past Suddenly Appears…
Don’t immediately decide it’s destiny.
And don’t immediately dismiss it either.
Pay attention.
What does this person bring with them?
What do you understand now that you couldn’t understand then?
What happens when you look at them without nostalgia doing the lighting?
Maybe they’re coming back to stay.
Wonderful.
Maybe they’re coming back to apologize.
Maybe you’re the one who needs to apologize.
Maybe nothing dramatic happens at all.
But perhaps they’re simply returning long enough to hand you a missing piece of your own story.
Take it.
Say thank you.
And don’t assume you have to marry the delivery person.
Sometimes the package is the point.
My mother seems to understand that.
Which is why, apparently, she keeps sending me men.
I’m hoping eventually she sends one without a lesson attached.
Listen to How I Killed My Mother
How I Killed My Mother is a memoir podcast about mothers and sons, depression and hope, family and forgiveness, caregiving, spirituality, humor, death, and the uncomfortable business of discovering who we really are.
The podcast also became the foundation for my upcoming memoir, How I Killed My Mother.
This isn’t a story about having all the answers.
It’s about what happened when I finally started asking myself the questions.
If you’re standing at the bottom of something right now, I can’t tell you how long your climb will be.
I can only tell you that I’ve stood at the bottom, too.
Climb with me.
— Jon-David
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