Why Didn't Harry Ask About His Parents' Graves? (was: Re: Godric's Hollow)

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 149953

vera:
*(snip)*
> I don't remember if this is a trait that we have when we are 
> children, perhaps it is, I'm not really sure, but most of the 
> children I have discussed this with told me that they are not aware 
> that Harry is brave just for not being in denial. Death, they told 
> me, is not something you deny and visiting your parents' graves 
> doesn't help. A particular fourteen-year-old student who lost her 
> mother at a very early age told me that she had never had the urge 
> to visit her mother's grave and that she does it because her family
> insists. She never wondered why Harry never visited their graves 
> because she feels the same way.  So, there you are. Please let me 
> know what you think.

Ceridwen:
My mother lost her parents at an early age.  She was two when her 
mother died, and her father put her in an orphanage and visited her 
and her sister until he died seven years later.  I have lived with 
phrases like, 'you don't know how lucky you are to have a mother' 
and 'I would never have argued with my mother, I would have been 
grateful just to have her'.  I tend to disagree with my mother, she 
feels the loss only because she had that loss to feel.

And she has felt it keenly all her life.  She remembers finding her 
mother dead.  She was two when it happened, and at 84, she still 
remembers it vividly.  She is still hungry for information about her 
parents.  She loves to see pictures of them.  She reminisces about 
the stories her grandmothers told her about her parents as children 
and young adults.  When I read Harry's reactions to hearing about his 
parents, it all sounds so familiar and right!

But as far as I know, my mother has never had a burning desire to 
visit her parents' graves.  They've been dead most of her life.  
That's nothing new, and is not comforting.  But hearing stories about 
them, especially when they appear out of nowhere, seeing pictures, 
mean so much to her.  Even finding out tidbits of genealogy excites 
her.  What she wants is what she never got as a child, a feel for 
what her parents were like, a way of knowing them as they were when 
they were alive.  She misses having parents.  She never missed having 
dead parents.

I can imagine what she would have done with the Mirror of Erised.  I 
can see her standing in front of it with her parents smiling at her, 
just like Harry.  This part of Harry's story rings very true to me.  
Just going on what I know of my mother, I think the answer to why 
Harry doesn't ask about his parents' graves is because they've always 
been dead, that isn't news to him; what he wants, and sadly can never 
have, is an idea of what life would have been like with them around.

Ceridwen.