Keeper of Memory

 Recently, I spent some quality time with some of my Best Beloveds. We laughed, and talked, and ate delicious food. We listened to favorite songs, and gently tugged at the seams of the world’s ragged edges until we could reknit them to our satisfaction. Perhaps best of all, we “remembered when” together.

It is a blessing to be in the company of people who carry memory with you, who have shared experiences and adventure, who knew you “way back when,” who have loved you through your “becomings,” all the ideations of yourself, to this Self, now.  We spoke of those who formed and impacted us-- parents and teachers, friends and family, poets, and singers. We told our stories, and our jokes and our heartbreaks; life is made up of all of this, of laughter and tears. 

My cousin Jill, daughter of my mom’s sister Sue, brought with her some of our family’s genealogy—or, as we now call it, “The Judgy Genealogy”—and we marveled together at some of the family traits that go back generations, and some that seem to skip a generation. We find the entire thing hilarious and couldn’t stop laughing at the description of some of our forebearers and assorted kin.

Take, for example. Elizabeth W Leathers who was “...always very strong seemingly as she did an enormous amount of yard work.” There’s a gardening gene I can relate to.

Then there is the assertion that Alfred O Leathers was “...not the last Leathers to be a great mathematician.” Clearly, this gene skips like a stone.

Hosea Gradon Leathers, one of the “.... nervous, temperamental type. Also, quite intellectual, as well as unreliable...a lawyer.” Oh, I have so many questions!

Then there is JE Leathers, who was reportedly “spoiled and high tempered. Never quite like other people. Very brilliant in some ways. Reality finally proved too much.” Who among us has not wrestled with reality?

But the entry that made us laugh the most inappropriately was a relative that died in 1854, “...when he climbed a tree and shot himself out of it. It may have been on purpose. The family never knew.” There is something about the wording that—as my people are wont to say— “tickles me.” I wonder how many people have accidentally shot themselves out of a tree. Did he have a catapult up there? Was it a squirrel gun?

Whatever the answers are, they are lost to the mists of time, but the questions remind me of how important it is to have people who can carry memory with us, laughing, and talking. Remembering when...