We Are More Than Our Memories

            My mom rarely missed an opportunity to take a picture, no matter what the occasion.  All family members came to accept this her habit, while upholding the right to groan whenever she aimed the camera our way. 

            This past Thanksgiving, every member of the family showed up. There was much consuming of holiday food and drink, much lounging on couches, and much playful nastiness over the family card game handed down to us by our grandparents.  And, yes, there was much picture taking too.  Not by my mother sadly, but by those with the presence of mind to reach for their cell phone during a Kodak moment.

            As a bonus this year, we were treated to a feast of photos—hundreds, maybe thousands, of photos taken and archived by my mother over the decades, now spread out across the dining room table.  We sifted through them surprised and delighted by having people, places, and events from the past come rushing back into the present.

            Memory is a curious thing.  Some things we never forget.  Other things we would never remember, but for an old photograph. Memories are not unlike the DNA of who we are. We archive deep within us those memories that best tell our story.  The others we let slip away.  

            So, are we the memories edited and woven together into the person we are today?  Are we the living and breathing narratives of spliced together memories from our past?  If so, were we to lose our memory altogether, who would we be?  Would we still be someone at all?  

            I have a memory of my grandmother and grandfather each holding their ground over a Thanksgiving dinner as to who had the correct date and destination of a foliage trip they took years ago.  It seemed silly and petty for them to be arguing over whether it was the fall of ’62 or the fall of ’63.  That said, I knew their sparring was a way of keeping their memories sharp.  Remembering the dates and details of past road trips was their way of holding on dearly to the life they shared, to the people they knew themselves to be.  The desire to preserve our memory is an existential desire—it stems from the desire to go on living.

            From Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”  Question then for you, Mr. Emerson, “Who is the one who sows the thought that leads to a destiny that is recorded for posterity?

Is it not the case, that prior to becoming a narrative or a destiny forged, prior to sowing that first thought which leads to becoming the person we know ourselves to be today, before all that, we are very much alive and well.  Even today, we who have thoughts and ideas, who have feelings and memories, will always be, and have always been, infinitely more than all we are able to hold, or even fail to hold, within our wee grasp.  

So, whether we still have ready access to all the memories that tell our story, or whether Alzheimer’s or some such ailment is robbing us of those precious memories, we remain alive and well, with God-given dignity, an awareness at home within an abiding peace, and from that perch we watch memories come and go, confident that though memories can indeed die, we cannot.