I've spent the last two days in Florida. Yesterday, I went through pictures and scanned a few. I'm struck by how often my father and his cousins and their parents gathered for family gatherings and parties. There were also tons of pictures from family vacations.
This lead me to a conversation I had on-line with a friend last night. I mentioned that my family took only three family vacations, along with a handful of short weekend trips. He mentioned that is wasn't really unusual to look back at this moment in my life and maybe look for some truth or to even question my own memory. I responded that I am far more interested in looking for the present truth.
That sounds mildly profound, but also pretentious. Does it have any meaning?
In this time of sorrow, I find myself missing my son, my friends, and the snow. I'm missing out on a collective experience, a memory that they'll share. Here, we've been sitting around my mom's house, staring at the television, clearing bookshelves, closets. My dad has been cremated, so there's no funeral. It's the bustle in the house that Emily Dickinson writes about. This is an odd feeling. I expected something different. I don't know what I expected. What truth do I derive out of this?
Looking at the pictures, examining the hundreds of recipes that my father typed up for me, and parsing my feelings, I am going to take away the truth that I want my house full of people for dinners, games, and laughs. I want my gas tank full of gas, and train/plane tickets in my hand to see the world. These are the truths from the past that I want to drive my present. I want bright, vivid memories, for myself and Andrew. So far, I haven't done such a good job. I'll have to try harder.
2 comments:
I think it's natural when you're immersed in death/loss to instinctively long for the life-affirming people and events of your normal life. It's scary to be reminded of your mortality. Our instinct is to get out of that and back to normalcy as soon as possible.
As the mother of adults now, it's surprising what they remember about me and their childhood days. It wasn't the big things that I always assumed it would be. It's sitting around scooping the guts out of the pumpkin. It's the time we had a snowball fight inside the house. It's when I tried to make my grandmother's fudge and it didn't harden, so we had to run out and buy ice cream to pour it over. So don't worry about creating "events" for Andrew. They're happening every day.
Laura
My most vivid memories are the goofy ones. But they involve a house full of people, at holidays. But, the adults (now senior citizens) had falling outs that trickled down to the kids. I never see my cousins. I don't have that to offer to Andrew.
I'm sure he'll remember the small goofy, everyday things. How I baked cookies for his lunch, or something like that. I just want to be sure that there are a few big ones in there, too.
Post a Comment