Remembrance of Things Past

Marcel Proust's multi-volume first-person narrative "A la recherche du temps perdu" is literally translated as "In Search of Lost Time." It starts with the narrator sitting in a cafe with a cup of tea and a cookie (a "petite madeleine," to be precise). When he dips the cookie into the tea and takes a bite, the sensory experience puts him in touch with all these past experiences. Wow! That's some cookie!

The point is, I think, that we are tied to the rest of our lives by all of our senses and that even a small thing can trigger the retrieval of a memory long buried in the far recesses of our minds. These things are not actually lost after all.

The brain is an amazing organ. Research has shown that vivid mental images can be virtually indistinguishable from the actual experiences from a brain and body chemistry perspective. This is the science behind visualization therapy, for example. So the taste of a tea-soaked cookie -- or our creating a detailed picture in our heads -- can bring it all back.

I am thinking about this because my family is presently making plans to put my mother's ashes in the ground in the family plot in Charleston, WV, where my Dad was buried in 1973. That is the last time that I was there. Thinking about this trip later this Fall, looking at pictures of the family plot sent to us by the cemetery manager, takes me back to that graveside and then, by extension, to that of paternal grandmother 12 or 13 years before, my first experience of death and death rituals.

The night we heard about Grandma, I remember playing with the dog and thinking that we shouldn't be having fun. I loved Grandma tremendously and had no idea what no longer having her at holidays -- ever again -- was going to mean. My dad was sad and withdrawn in a way that I had never seen in him before, even though he was always a quiet, gentle person. Of course I had no idea what to do with that either.

We flew down to Charleston in what was my very first plane ride. Talk about mixed emotions! It was a time of year when the weather was chilly and rainy -- November, I think. At the funeral home, we were in a side room most of the time, although they had the family come in before the service to view Grandma in the open casket. Then we went back out. I remember thinking it didn't look like her, and also that this was the last thing on earth I wanted for myself. That thinking has stuck to this day.

At the graveside, it was gray and wet. There was the hole surrounded by some kind of ground covering, and the casket on a lowering mechanism. I don't remember what was said there or what we did afterward. I am sure that some kind family friend had a meal of some kind. Then my parents stayed on to settle things, sending the three of us kids home on the overnight train, my 17-year-old brother in charge of my 13-year-old brother and me. Friends met us at the station and life went on. It was all a bit surreal, a kind of anti-climax. I wonder if I really dealt with it or knew how.

When my Dad died suddenly in 1973, it was June. He was cremated, so we did not have to deal with the whole casket thing. Down we flew again and stood at the graveside. It was a beautiful sunny day, for which I was monumentally grateful. And there was this tiny box instead of a large casket. I remember looking at it and thinking this was way too small a box for a person (and the plain casket he was cremated in), way too small. Cognitive dissonance and then some. Family friends had a lunch for us afterwards. And we made our own ways home. I flew back to Connecticut, where I was working, by myself and went on with my life, surreal and anti-climactic.

I don't know if I am better prepared this third time or not. I'd like to think so. It has been a while since Mom died and now it is more a question of getting this last thing done for her and getting the final bit of closure. The weather will hopefully be pleasant. I am looking forward to seeing this place again, with my grandparent's stones and my Dad's stone, and now my mother's. Any contacts with family friends are long disappeared with the passage of time and the changing of the generational guards. We will all go home, and life will go on. Not as surreal this time, I don't expect.

I doubt I will be back there again. This is not what I see doing for myself.

So what does this have to do with being retired, being 60ish, etc? I guess because this is the last thing I have to do for the generation before me. Now I am solidly in the senior generation in the family. It's scary. It also makes me think about how to make the best use of this time in my life. Now is the time.

Carpe diem.