Embracing memories or avoiding memories? (graduated, Santa Claus, vacation, grandmother)

[jean_ji]

Our grandkids have been a big part of our lives as they live nearby. The nearly thirteen year old is growing up and away from us while the nine year old is happily into traditions for now. I see the changes and commented on them to DH. I feel the need to point out the differences with what was to what is, while DH gives it a nod and then focuses on what is happening in the moment.

DH acknowledges memories as something that cannot be changed, only learned from, and he moves forward. I feel the need to categorize them as positive or negative and and to think about them. Our approaches are totally different. I spend time wondering how he became who he is and he of course doesn’t think about it at all and just is.

[JanND]

Originally Posted by upnorthretiree

My folks are both gone now. They had moved from Michigan to Florida, then after 15 years in Florida moved back to Michigan, where they lasted another 8 years. I had moved to Michigan in retirement, and they were at an age where they needed to be near one of their kids. They were in assisted living, very close to me, and about 20 miles from where they had lived in younger days. Mom loved going for a drive to their old home town, and basked in the good memories. Dad never wanted to, because he said those days were gone, many of his friends were gone, and it made him sad to think about them.

One of the Russian novelists had a character who lived in the country, miles from anyone, in an old family estate. The character said he never got lonely when isolated and snowbound in the winter, because he could look around and remember his mother sewing at the fire, his brothers playing outside the window, his grandparents sitting and eating supper. His memories were always there to keep him company.

I vacillate. There are days when I’m driving around and am so happy to be living near where I spent a lot of time in my youth, and so happy my folks had those 8 years so near to me after moving back. I can look around and smile to recall the long scenic drives, the suppers together, the trips with them to the same grocery store I’m going inside. I can picture them in all the old familiar places. Other days the memories hit me over the head and leave me so sad at all that’s lost and will never come again. It started me wondering whether you all share the mixed feelings? Or are you more like one or the other of my folks, either always happy with remembering good times in the past, or never wanting to think about the past at all?

You did such a wonderful thing, moving close to your folks. You undoubtedly gave them some wonderful times, I personally appreciate you for that.

I think the mixture of memories...good ones, sweet ones and ones that make you so sad is simply what grief is. It will be this way for awhile....Experience it, it will lessen in severity over time....Eventually mostly you'll think of the sweet smiles and loving conversations that you were lucky enough to share with your folks in their last years. Cherish those!! I lived 2000 miles from mine....I wish I had some of those times to remember. God Bless you.

[TheShadow]

Sometimes I think about what it must have been like for my MIL as her memories dimmed. With her dementia, the first memories she lost were the most recent, and as she progressed the "memory horizon" moved slowly backwards from the present time. So her earliest memories would be the last to go. She often retold stories from her distant past, and because she didn't remember telling us before, she would retell them over and over until we could recite them if we had wanted to. It was comforting to her, and there was no point in telling her we'd heard them before. She wouldn't remember us telling her that 5 minutes from now, or 5 minutes after that. So we listened politely as if it were the first time, and asked for details (the same details we'd heard many times before) because it allowed her to engage and feel relevant to the conversation. I actually think back fondly on those times (I'm starting to cry) because we'll never hear those stories again, and never be able to tease out some new detail for the first time. Even though her dementia was sad, the memories of her, even the ones of her in slow mental decline, are pleasant and heartwarming ones.

It's funny how the mind works, how some memories are so vivid and so clearly recalled, and others just fade away. It seems that the mind can remember what it wants, when it wants, with or without our conscious control. Sometimes the memories just come, unbidden, unwanted, better forgotten, but there they are. I think it's because there was a lesson in that moment, something your mind wants to tell you. I have a freaky memory. I remember small details of things almost 60 years ago, but might have trouble telling you where I was last Tuesday. It doesn't mean I'm losing my memory, just that nothing relevant happened on Tuesday. My mind examined it, checked for anything interesting, and then discarded it.

[Heidi60]

Originally Posted by brightdoglover

When I retired, after three months, I moved from Boston to Colorado. Driving out of the Northeast, I felt myself driving past some places of unfortunate memory (Cleveland, Pittsburgh) and then on into the uncharted (unremembered) middle of the country. I felt like I was dropping the past, all of it, Boston, work, disappointments, failures, New Jersey early life. It was very geographic and unexpected but I think it went well. I feel in a way that I've only been alive for almost 4 years now, with retirement.

We have the same roots! Cleveland, Portage Lakes and memories.

I wish I could recall where I read that we must go backward in our old age, before we are able to move forward again. That has been so true in my life. A few years ago I so needed to go home, but thanks to CD and Google maps I realized it is no longer there as I knew it, I have wondered to far to get away and can't find my way home, except in my memories. There is nothing as secure as my Grandpa's house in Portage Lakes or comforting as the smells of Grandma's Cleveland kitchen, and riding my bike on Dodge Ave. in Akron. They are all gone of course, but they left me with a road map to reach the end and will be with me until we meet again.

[brightdoglover]

My early life was in south Jersey, and while the relatives I visited were still alive, I went back. Gave me the creeps and I was always glad to leave. School for two years in Pittsburgh (with trips to Cleveland for concerts) and then on to Boston at age 20.

I think what gave me the creeps about south Jersey was the slipping back somewhat into the person I was then- depressed, and blaming south Jersey for the feeling, without realizing how damaged the people around me were. My 50th reunion is now and I don't want to go. Not because high school was such an issue- it wasn't- but because I just don't care about that past.

[Heidi60]

I signed up for my high school class web page but in reality, I don't recall most of those people! Sadly, there are posts about people who died but other than two or three close friends at the time, I don't know who they are.
Have you ever watched those Time-Life programs trying to sell CDs with music from decades ago? I remember the songs but not much about what I was doing at the time. The music they play sends all kinds of emotions through me but that is about it, like the feeling of safety with my grandparents.

[YorktownGal]

Originally Posted by Heidi60

I signed up for my high school class web page but in reality, I don't recall most of those people! Sadly, there are posts about people who died but other than two or three close friends at the time, I don't know who they are.

I don't remember my classmates either!

I thought it was just me - a terrible memory or something.

Glad to know I'm not alone!

[happygrrrl]

Originally Posted by TheShadow

Sometimes I think about what it must have been like for my MIL as her memories dimmed. With her dementia, the first memories she lost were the most recent, and as she progressed the "memory horizon" moved slowly backwards from the present time. So her earliest memories would be the last to go. She often retold stories from her distant past, and because she didn't remember telling us before, she would retell them over and over until we could recite them if we had wanted to. It was comforting to her, and there was no point in telling her we'd heard them before. She wouldn't remember us telling her that 5 minutes from now, or 5 minutes after that. So we listened politely as if it were the first time, and asked for details (the same details we'd heard many times before) because it allowed her to engage and feel relevant to the conversation

That was what happened with my father. He thought he was a young guy on the farm again, riding his horse. My mother was pretty upset when he asked a nurse who that old woman ( my mother) was.

I was in my early 20's when that happened & it's haunted me ever since.

[herringbone]

While I have very much enjoyed reading the poignant, even poetic posts on this thread of how others embraced or avoided memories of the past, I have waited to see a post that describes how I, and my family 'deal' with memories-good or bad. There has been no such post so I'll try to describe it myself.

We laugh! Maybe this is a cultural thing.... My father is european/my mother south american. As early as I can remember, we have been telling 'stories' about/on each other.

Remember when Mami found out she was pregnant just as she planned to leave Papi? Yes, she threw dishes at our heads for months- she slapped me once! Ha ha ha! Of course now, that child is the most cherished one of us all.... Remember when Papi was in southeast asia for his job and neglected to leave enough money to keep us going and the power was turned off for almost a week, and sisters, mother and grandmother sat around the kitchen table lit by candles and speculated on the idea of starting up a multi-generational who*e house to earn enough money to turn the power back on? Ha ha ha ha! Remember when Papi took out his belt to whack us when we snuck out to smoke pot and then his pants fell down? Ha ha!

You get the idea. Memories, especially bad ones, become a source of story-telling mirth, when we looked back on it all... so that is the way memories are stored in my mind. If I shuffle thru memories, they may be tinged with some small sadness, but mainly I look back with tender amusement... what silly fools...

This is not to say that my family hasn't been touched by hard times, like everyone else... it is to say that there is some story-telling element that is present that allows us to retain memories as in shaking our heads, laughing at the ridiculousness of life and what it put us through. Even the deaths of loved ones.

One sister recently told me... I dreamed about Aunt Fanny (she's dead) .... she was mad because I let my teenage son highlight his hair with pink and he was too skinny (he's a vegetarian). Aunt Fanny tried to stuff me down the toilet, but when she flushed, I was too big to go through.... Ha ha ha! Aunt Fanny was my sister's god-mother who she dearly loved and misses.

Marcus Aurelius says external events happen and are immovable. But in our minds, how we see things----

Life is Opinion.

Hope my post doesn't offend anyone. I am in no way saying that life isn't often hard/sad. Only trying to explain how even the hardest/saddest of times are tinged with laughter in my memories due to this 'story-telling' habit I was brought up with. It is probably the only reason I am still mildly sane.

[happygrrrl]

Hmmmm...I guess it never occurred to me when my sister was alive to say, "Hey, D., remember how hilarious it was when our father was sundowning, ran into the living room, grabbed me by the wrists & almost threw me out a closed, glass second-storey slider, and you had to send J. over to find him because now our father was buck-naked & running through the parking lot with a kitchen knife, while our mother was screeching & hysterical & completely useless? Wow, that was a hoot! And it was during Thanksgiving! Yay!"