Very recently my grandmother passed away on my birthday of all days. She was 86 and not well so we weren’t surprised, but of course saddened. Her passing meant that I had to suddenly fly from Seattle to Ohio for her memorial service. I expected to see family, eat some mayonnaise based foods, and drink lots of wine with my mom. What I did not expect when I got there was the flood of memories that washed over me and the power they have to inspire.
Much of my adult life has been spent avoiding my adult life and because of this there are many things I don’t really remember all that well or have chosen to forget entirely. Real childhood memories are fuzzy at times and it’s largely due to the coping mechanisms I have used for so many years. This is not to say I forget everything. I’m not going to wake up one day and remember that I’m actually a Norwegian spy who has to save the world. That would admittedly be kind of cool, but I’m not tall enough to be from Norway anyway so I doubt that will happen.
In the last couple of years through a lot of hard work I’ve learned how to better deal with my own existence. It’s not perfect, but I’m trying and because of that I’ve been marginally happier and more in tune with the world around me. This has meant that I am fully experiencing my life, rather than trying to always avoid it. This can be completely overwhelming at times, but that’s a whole other neurotic post. I’m making new memories as I go along, and as it turns out, recalling old ones that I thought were long gone.
My trip home to Ohio was bound to be sentimental. When a family member passes, particularly one that had been around as long as my grandma had, there are stories to share, tears to shed, and nostalgic laughter to let ring. These reasons alone are enough to saturate a mind with past remembrance, but holy smokes did I get a double helping of it.
Memories of summertime sitting on my parents’ front porch and listening to my mother’s wind chimes twinkling their music fill me with an almost instantaneous calm. That porch and the sensation of the smooth concrete under my feet as I glide over it on the swing and gaze down the Ohio River is the closest thing to heaven I can think of. Hummingbirds flit by and stop at the feeder next to the hanging baskets of flowers, a chorus of locusts, and the smell of charged air and dry earth as the afternoon thunderstorm begins; These are all things that I hope will never leave me. They are the memories I hoard like treasure.
But there was more that I didn’t expect. There were things that weren’t as much memories as feelings buried deep within my bones – The way my grandmother’s screen door sounds when someone opens and closes it. The smell of her basement and the stones in the concrete on her sidewalk and how they used to hurt my feet as a child. These things opened a door in my heart that hasn’t been opened in a long time and there were quite a few stories that came back to me. I put them carefully in my treasure chest.
While I was home (because that’s what I’ll always call it) I started keeping a list of things I never wanted to forget again. I scribbled them frantically into my notebook before they had the chance to slip away again. I want to keep them forever. I need them. They are my life.
A rather unintended and somewhat surprising side effect of my trip home was inspiration to write! I’ve been struggling lately (I haven’t even been regularly keeping up with this blog) and every story idea I’ve had of late seems sort of empty and soulless. This visit, this journey and the realization of how in love with my hometown I am has opened the window (hopefully) for something real and true and I’m excited to get started on it.
It’s amazing, the power of memory and it’s influence on our senses. Smells and sights and the feeling in the air, hearing crickets for the first time in a long time (no crickets in Seattle!), and even something childlike such as catching fireflies are so powerful it can almost be overwhelming for a person whose memories have been muted for a while.
My grandmother may have died on my birthday, but as whimsical as it seems I like to think maybe this openness and inspiration were her final gift to me. Thanks, JoAnn. For everything I mean.
Badpie is Delicious 