Remember? Yes, I’ll always remember.
This is a repeated line from a poem called, Ghost’s Grace by Paul Fleischman.
Remember? Will I always remember? I don’t know if I can answer that so solidly sure.
I find myself in a stage of life where I am squeezed in the middle between the 9 year old daughter and the 91 year old father. Recently, I have been dealing with my mother’s memory losses. She doesn”t remember sitting in the doctors’ office saying it was 2006 when it was really 2012. She can’t remember my being with her at her appointments. She doesn’t remember taking the assisted living bus to the drugstore but then walking home. She didn’t remember on Thanksgiving that Dad went to our house for the morning and she got up to see if he was in bed when my brother came to visit. She laughed about forgetting one of my brothers’ names in the vocalized lineup of kids that I thought was an unerasable tatoo on the mind. At least it wasn’t me she forgot(just kidding Tommy)
I am wondering very seriously if I will be able to hold on to memory. I never ever thought my mother would forget. If she can surely I could too.
But remembering is what I love about Christmas. Remembering the recipes, remembering the traditions, remembering the singing, and in particular remembering the tree and the ornaments.
Ornaments are a built in review course. Putting up the tree and its ornaments, forces me to stop, look(really look) and remember. Perhaps it is because my mother divided up and gave away all her Christmas ornaments that this plague of forgetting is upon her? I know better, but in the meantime I am going to sit in our living room with all the lights turned off except of course for the Christmas tree lights and let my eyes meander and gaze over all the places and birthdays and anniversaries and colors and events and people and… remember while I can.