I think I’ve written about some aspects of this before, but it’s on my mind almost all the time now. And I have to push beyond it.
My mother was born when my grandmother was 45 and already had two children, one 18 and the other 14 or 15. I was born when Mother was 22, so for a long time I had a lot of dear relatives who were older than I . . . and I was the youngest of four grandchildren.
I knew all the stories reaching back to the 1880’s. Then a couple of my cousins on my maternal side died early and then my uncle when I was in my late 40’s. Then my aunt when she was in her 90’s. My father died in 2000 and Mother died when she was 83. These people had all been a link to my own grandmother who had been so very dear to me. She was the one who was born in 1881 and told stories of her mother and grandmother.
And things revolved around one house for all my years. So many clearly remembered vignettes from a long ways back. Some I had heard so many times, it seemed as if I were remembering them myself first hand.
And now, as I wrote once, it is just me and pots of geraniums on Memorial Day.
Mother didn’t want an estate sale and so much has stayed the same around me. I don’t think I noticed it at first, but I am beginning to believe I have been trying to keep people alive by letting things stay as they were.
It’s time for a deep breath and getting on. Well, maybe two deep breaths.
I find memories to be comforting, like a hug from an old blanket or sipping from a favorite coffee mug. You cannot replace Grandma’s secret recipe for biscuits and gravy. I don’t understand folks who shun the past.. There is no future in forgetting.
Moving on is hard. Moving on, however doesn’t mean forgetting the past, it means making new memories while preserving the old ones. I’m the memory keeper in my family. My grandkids are always saying tell me about… My brother keeps telling me to write it down. When I think about the past, I miss it so much, but I probably should preserve it so it doesn’t disappear.
I guess what I meant to say is that I need to take the memories forward with me as more are made. I need to deal with things.
What is hard for me sometimes is that I’m the only one that has the memories. My kids have no memory of my mom. My husband only knew her two years. Sure they’ve heard me tell of her but after 31 years even my memories seem somehow faded and lost sometimes. I sometimes wonder if the memories I have are real or just imagined, it’s all a bit fuzzy. I don’t like that because I miss my mom. 31 years and I miss her still. So then I start to think, will my grandkids remember me? Will they talk about grandma and how crazy she was or will I be a faded postcard in their minds.
Well now that was cheerful wasn’t it.