Who Keeps the Memories in Your Family?

Who is the memory keeper in your family? When I was growing up, there was always an aunt or uncle who would wander into what I termed, “ancient history” the minute something activated some bit of family history in their mind. Now that I’m old enough to have acquired some history of my own, I wish I had paid more attention to all of their stories.

I didn’t realize it until I had a conversation with my older son but I am the memory keeper in my family. While many might doze when my mother started relating bygone events, I liked the stories. I didn’t think of it as a ‘job’ but a frequent interlude where I learned a little bit more about where I came from and how I came to be.

My older son seems to be of much the same mind set as we recently had an extended conversation about events he remembered from his growing up as well as many of the stories from my mother that I passed on over the years. At one point in the conversation, he exclaimed, “Mom! You are keeping our family history alive! You just told me a tiny bit of a memory your mother had and passed down to you. Now, I have the memory to share with someone, some day, and my great-grandfather won’t be forgotten.”

I remember a nephew calling me, years ago, because he was writing an essay for school about his grandparents . . . and he didn’t know a thing about them. Not a word had been passed down to him from his parents and he was at a complete loss. I found it sad and realized that whatever he ended up writing for his school paper was only going to be remembered for the duration of the required essay and not consider the history of his family.

This lack of interest is also evidenced in my immediate family. Although I have related many of my mother’s stories and adventures growing up, my older son is the only one who listened past the telling and kept them in his heart.

No one physically lives forever but it seems a shame that how they lived and what they experienced should be lost when they die. It is kind of like their memory fading from mind all too soon. As my son pointed out to me, my mother’s tiny memory of her father who died when she was very young was really all she had of him. I don’t know if she realized the importance of sharing that with me but it was exciting for my grown-up son as he said it is a moment in the family that has been given in trust to him to, one day, share with his own family . . . so they will know something of their great, great grandfather.

Remembering World War I – The Aftermath . . .

I had a stake in World War I although I was born long after World War II. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a German soldier in World War I. Early in the conflict, he took a bullet in the lung and received no medical care while incarcerated in a French prison. After the war, which he managed to survive, his health was seriously impaired and he was in a medical facility which dealt with such cases. My grandmother, doing her part for the returning soldiers, was working there and so they met. They married and had two daughters, one of which died at birth and the other one was my mother.

My grandfather died while my mother was still very young. Her only memory was of a tall, pale man who rescued her from a school of tiny fish that were tickling her toes while wading in the sea. She was raised by her mother and they lived on the small pension left by her father’s military duty.

I never thought too much about this until my older son started asking questions about his relatives especially the German side of the family. He was a bit sad that the only memory my mother had of her father was so small and seemingly insignificant. He told me that when all memories of people are forgotten, they are forgotten on this earth and that is tragic as we are each a part of the living still. He said memories have to be cherished and passed on so they don’t die. He was very happy to have this small bit of his great grandfather now in his memory bank. Then he asked me what his great grandfather’s name was and for the life of me, I didn’t know nor remembered my mother saying it. I dragged out dusty boxes of photos, old black and white ones dated before World War II of my mother’s life growing up in German. Unfortunately, there was little notation on the backs of them but then I found a picture of a young girl that looked a lot like me at that age and there was writing on the back of the photo.

“Ingeborg Teichmann at the grave of her Father, Walter R. Teichmann in Marbach, District Nossen/Saxony” 1936

We now had a name, a picture, and a memory. Memories are how we come to be and when you lose your past, it takes away from your future.