With so much personal and family loss facing me this year, I draw on lots of memories to sustain me. Watching older family members become forgetful, and in one case, sinking into dementia itself, is painful, albeit they are well into their 80s. Everyone else tells me to remember the good days, and even the one suffering dementia tells me cherish the wonderful memories I have of my late mother. Indeed, this is why we "memoir." To remember, so that we are not truly gone. We comfort ourselves with the idea that if we remember someone who has died, they are not really gone, not as long as we can remember them, and share memories of them.
The flip side is the grim reality another acquaintance pointed out on his radio show last week, that when someone dies, he is gone, and when we who remember them die, he is ultimately erased. I hate to think that is true, but I suppose it is. When I am gone, who will care about the memoirs I have written and the photo albums and keepsakes of my family I have so carefully preserved? When my dad dies, who will realize, besides me, that the worn bar of soap he keeps in a plastic bag, preserved in his dresser, was the last one my mother used? Who will understand that the near empty bottle of Secret I keep on MY dresser, was hers?
If it didn't matter, why do so many of us keep these things? Even the totally unsentimental among us keep letters from deceased loved one's, photos, now creased and worn from being carried in old wallets.
For those who are snooty, arrogant, holier than thous who reply, "I have my memories, I don't need things!" I have to ask, "what will you do when your memory fades way, thought by though, image by image, dripping like drops from a leaky faucet, and the only crutch you have to bring to life those loved ones is a dried flower, an old Teddy, a worn photo album>
Grim thoughts on a cold, spring day. With sun and light come happier thoughts.
No comments:
Post a Comment