Ammi Midstokke: When the memory keepers leave

My father was raised with four of his five siblings, another having disembarked before her third birthday. And so it was that his two older brothers and one sister shared their formation as individuals, wrestled with the complexity of a single mother and split homes in the 1960s, goaded each other into remarkable athleticism, and then leaned on each other as they helplessly watched their remaining sister waste away until her death just after her 18th birthday.

Their mother was left with three boys. They married, created three perfect pairs of cousins, raised them, navigated divorces, careers, their cantankerous father (and that is a kind word), new marriages and grandparenthood from their respective positions in life. The older they got, the closer they grew, maybe because age helps us discern what is precious, but also because those who knew us then and now are the touchstones of our reality.

Our people give shape and context to the nebulous form of our lives. They keep our memories and affirm our histories. We share the unspoken bonds of unspeakable experiences, of grief and joy, and the silent, compassionate wisdom of bearing witness to the growth of each other. They remember wearing dickies under V-neck sweaters, wrecking each other’s cars (that one was my dad), throwing knives into the kitchen floor before mom got home. They remember the silence when they realized she was standing in the doorway.

If we’re lucky, we keep making memories with them, continue to explore and define ourselves through their reflection of us.

So when my father told me his brother died suddenly, my first thought was that he’s lost a third of himself. Who will remember and know my father as his brother has?

It is not just the person we lose, it is us through their lens. I don’t know how we navigate the rest of our lives without their perspective, how we hold on to our history without their validation of it, who we are without each other. It seems a lonely prospect.

As it happens, I was on my way to the funeral of another beloved family member. This is the era we find ourselves in now, where our travel budget is reserved for births, weddings and deaths. Which makes me think I ought to retire (or die) in a vacation destination that makes the trip worthwhile.

Regardless of the destination of Missouri in July, the gathering of humans to share memories and discover a person anew subsequent to their departure is a gift within the grief. I only wish they were there to hear it, to hear the ways in which they unwittingly changed our lives and helped us define ourselves in the fray of it. I wish they were here to hear how much they were loved, and how deserving of it they were all this time.

As it also happens, I find myself busy at the adult task of “estate planning.” It was not inspired by death, but by marriage and procrastination. My estate consists primarily of some dog-eared books, a big-eared dog and one extensive collection of journals (ages 9 to present) that keeps enough memories to embarrass several generations. I have meticulously planned their future in a vault until enough time has passed that subjects – cursed lovers and the like – of my bad poetry will not be recognized in the local drug store. Thankfully, I stopped trying to write poetry decades ago.

I’m not sure it is best to be remembered by our own perception of ourselves. We spend much of our lives finding faults in the most benign parts of our bodies, minds and efforts. Leave the remembering to the mourning, for they are far more generous and kind.

In my memories of my uncle, he moves and talks just like my grandmother whom I loved dearly. To be in his presence was to be in her memory, too. He could walk up and down stairs on his hands, I’ve been told, but not touch his pinky to his thumb. Once, I watched him make an entire New Year’s buffet dinner solely out of canned foods from a pantry with a half life of 800 years. Before then, I had no idea one could buy a whole ham in a can, or that it was socially acceptable to serve it with Dole pineapple rounds. He responded to my queries about vegetables with a green bean casserole a la Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup.

Any person who can create a meal for 20 people in less than 20 minutes is clearly a legend.

I do question whether that meal in particular may have contributed to his untimely demise. I think the consensus is that his tireless dedication to caring for his ailing father – because that’s the kind of man Ted was – damaged him more than the giant Spam. In my memories of him, he dedicated his life to being a better father than he’d had and to learning to grow and love in new ways.

I don’t know if I told him any of that.

It’s not that we don’t remember the challenges. It’s that they seem less important because they are. We should pause sometimes in the midst of our lives and say the things that matter.

It is not just the people themselves we will miss, but how they invisibly tether us to this world. We may have our own memories, but when they leave, they take those they’ve been keeping for us, and they are often the best ones.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com