Who Are We In The End? . . A Question of Selective Forgetting

I just realized that a month or so ago marked the 10th anniversary of my father’s passing. Now I realize things get busy, and it’s been 10 years, but he was my dad.

Kind of gives the old sentiment, “How quickly we forget” new meaning. Sorry Dad.

The thing is, when I think back to those days a decade ago, what I remember above all else is not what you’d imagine.

What I most remember was that given all he’d done in his life . . hardly anyone was there for my father’s funeral.

Of all the many people he’d known . . the many people his life had touched . . only a meager handful came to the funeral home. The emptiness of that place was eerie . . so sad.

Of course, of the friends he had left, some weren’t well.

Some didn’t know.

Some had forgotten.

It’s hard to blame them. After all, he’d been sick and out of their lives for over two years.

Still, it seemed more than a little sad standing there in that big empty funeral home with my mother and brother – and my brother’s family – waiting for people who remembered my dad to come and say goodbye. Hardly anyone came.

Sometimes We Just Forget

People forget.

When they have to work to remember, they just forget.

Of those who did stop by, most were my mother’s friends. They came for her . . to support her . . just as she’d supported them over the years through deaths of parents, husbands, and children . . and illnesses and losses of every sort.

They came for her because they’d been part of her experience – a sisterhood, the soul-saving part – in dealing with my father’s illness. They came because they were family as much as family was family.

For my mother’s friends, it wasn’t about remembering my dad so much as it was about letting my mother know they wouldn’t forget HER. They were there for her as no one else could be – not even my brother nor I – since the history they shared with her was one of memories and experiences my brother and I didn’t have. (The fact is: Some of them knew my dad better than I ever did – or would.)

They were there because everyone knew we kids would eventually go back to our lives . . but my mother could never go back to anything she’d known before. They were there because they knew she would have to learn to go forward “alone”. And they knew it wouldn’t be easy.

It wasn’t.

What We Remember, What We Forget

Some forgetting is harder than others. Some memories slip through the fingers like a breeze through the silken threads of a spider’s web. Who’s to say which ones we keep, or why.

Time passes. People forget. I forget. (Obviously.)

It isn’t work for me to remember my dad, but I forgot. Ten years, and I forgot. Just 10 years.

What does that say about me? Not much.

Life goes on.

My father and I had a tumultuous history. We were too much alike. We were too different from one another. It doesn’t matter the reasons.

The hard part is that we really never knew one another. Oh sure, we knew how to get on each other’s nerves. And I was born with his sweet tooth. But, we didn’t know one another.

We didn’t know how to talk with each other. One or the other of us always seemed to push a button, and then we’d be off. Things we wanted to say seemed far too often to get lost in translation. And the translation was rarely a good one.

When I look back, I guess I could spend my time feeling guilty for my part that play – or angry for my dad’s. That hardly makes any sense now, though.

In the end, all we are are memories in the minds of those we left behind.

The cool part is that I get to choose which memories to hold on to and which to discard. We all do.

The way I see it: What I choose to forget simply isn’t worth keeping. It’s not worth the effort it takes to keep pushing it away.

What I remember . . what I will always remember . . is that I loved my dad.

I love that he let me be the tomboy I was.

I love that he gave me the freedom to follow my own paths, even though I know he’d have preferred I took different ones.

I love that he loved and was devoted to my mom, and that he never once sought to hold her or her dreams back.

Time passes. In 20 years, who knows how much else I will probably have forgotten about my father.

I can accept that. It’s okay.

In the end, I have to believe that I will remember what’s important for me to remember about my father. He was a man. He wasn’t perfect. He did the best he could given the daughter he got (no slim feat, by a long shot!). And I loved him.

.   .   .   .   .

Memory can be a harsh judge, if we let it. It can also take a toll on us if we let its control over us grow and keep us in the past rather than watching over it and guiding it from the present.

How do you choose to remember parents or others who had a significant influence in your life?

What do you hold on to? What have you given yourself permission to forget?

Please share your thoughts and stories. I love hearing from you.

Keep growing my friend,

Gail

Tagged as: Forgetting, love, memories, remember