Let us take a moment now to look at memories that last.
I am grateful this evening for memories–those that last, and those that don’t seem to stick. Memories are funny things; they grow increasingly fuzzy over time. If one were to graph our ability to remember things, putting time in years on the X axis and things we remember clearly on the Y, as time increases toward the right, the line stretching from the Y axis gradually goes down before dropping precipitously off after a period of some seven or eight decades depending on one’s general state of health and mental capacity. There seems to be an inverse reaction in which as time increases the line representing the number of things we remember goes down and the number of things we outright forget goes up. Of course I am relying on my own memory of charts and graphs and statistics, recognizing that way back in the olden days when I was taking math we mostly only talked about X and Y axes…it was only later on when they added Z and a whole bunch of other letters. That was long after I had taken my last math class; it amazes and frightens me to know how much I’ve forgotten or never learned in the first place.
Anyway, the kind of memories I’m talking about are not those things like do you remember how to do line graphs or the what the capital of each state is or how to get from here to there (like anyone knows how to do that without a GPS device these days.) They are memories of people, of family events, of cultural and familial traditions. I was talking to one of my siblings today about our family history. We were recalling some family stories of who was who, tidbits we’d heard from our grandfather or father or read in a document somewhere. I bet you if I sat down with all five of my siblings and we began to talk about what we “knew” and remembered, our knowings would differ a great deal from one another.
I can remember talking to my father about various things to do with his side of the family. Some of his stories were a bit incredible and I found myself wishing I’d had the benefit of talking with both my dad and his younger brother at the same time. I can remember having conversations and correspondences with my Uncle Al over the years in which he contradicted some of the things my father remembered about their early days, about my grandfather, and about many of the events that occurred over the course of their growing up days. Now my father and all of his siblings are gone, except for a half-brother whom I have never met. Families can be such odd units.
At one point I had fancied myself the chronicler of family history. I had pestered my grandfather for years to tell me stories of our family and to write down what he could remember of our family history. Eventually he did sit down and write out some information about three of our family lines. Now the only people who can verify some of the information he wrote and some of what my father and his brothers might have written about are those of us of my generation–my siblings and my two first cousins on my father’s side of the family. The more I learn about who some of these ancestors were, the more I want to know about them. I still haven’t given up my dream of writing a family history that brings them all to live for me, my siblings, and all of our children (and their children.) Part of that process will actually include sitting down with my siblings and asking them to recall what stories they heard from my father, mother, and other relatives about who the people in our family stories and old photographs really were. No doubt it will make for a thoroughly enjoyable time. Any time spent with all my siblings together has the potential to be thoroughly enjoyable. I look forward to making time to do just that.
This has probably been an odd gratitude blog this evening. I suppose I am in a contemplative mood; thinking about who I am in relation to my ancestors. I am grateful to have the memories I do have, as fuzzy as they may be. As I wrote the other night, I think about my mother and although I’ve lived 17 years without her being part of my active life, there are things I remember distinctly, and things (like the sound of her laugh) that I can no longer reproduce from memory. But her essence is still with me and still part of my every day life. So too with my father: there are things I remember distinctly and things I have forgotten. I am grateful for my memories, no matter what forms they take.
