False Memories
People have always told me that I can't remember my mother. Not the mother who raised me, who was there as I grew up to care for me, to teach me, to make daily sacrifices on my behalf, but the mother who gave me birth.
The first time I told my father about this mother I remembered—"my real mother was very beautiful, and very sad," I said one day with no warning—he looked startled. He and mother—mother Organa—closed themselves away for over an hour before they emerged and told me that I had been adopted as an infant, that there was no way I could remember a mother who died just after giving birth to me.
I protested, but they insisted. I trusted them.
So I pushed the memory away, believing it to be false. I pushed away other memories with it—a man's voice, coming as it were from far away, exchanging words with a woman whose voice I thought I remembered. The man and the woman had loved me, I felt.
Nobody remembered things from before they were born, they told me. Another false memory.
I pushed away the image—no, more like an impression—of a very young boy I once knew, someone I had spent a lot of time with, someone who was never associated with an image. We had been very close, this boy and I. I knew it.
But I couldn't know it. Because memories from that long ago could not be trusted.
Years later, I would come to know that it was that assertion that could not be trusted. I never blamed my foster parents for hiding the truth from me. They feared for my safety if I were found out. They were right to fear. I cannot blame them for seeking to protect me.
Years later, I would stand by an imposing foe and feel a strange surge of compassion, even affection, although the feelings were brief and easily suppressed.
Years later, I would meet a young man who reminded me of someone I once knew, long ago. I had learned not to trust my instincts or my emotions. I pushed the memory away.
Eventually, this young man would tell me what I already knew, what I had known since before I was born, what the Force had shown me multiple times and what I had repressed my entire life.
People have always told me that I can't remember my mother. But I can. I know that now for certain.
My brother made my memories true again.