On Grief and Memory…

When I was young, four or five, my older sister and I got locked in a closet by a babysitter. Now before you go imagining the worst, let me just say that the babysitter was there in the closet with us. This poor teenager was doing her best to keep us entertained, indulging whatever fantastical game we were playing, and inadvertently got us stuck in a small dark space filled with coats. We were at my grandparent’s house. I remember the closet, it was in my grandfather’s study, which had a fold-out couch and served as a second guest room for me when my sister and I would sleep over. My sister got the actual guest room that had the big, tall adult bed with the beautiful mahogany wood frame, a family heirloom. I had no qualms sleeping in my granddad’s study with the books lining the shelves, many of the spines lodged in my memory (“Who is this Burr Gore Vidal person?” I remember thinking), and the small desk he used for writing. But I really don’t remember any more details about getting locked in the closet.

Now normally my sister would interject here, coloring the story with some specifics that I just can’t place: the babysitter’s name, the game we were playing, how long we were actually in the closet before my grandparents got home, and what we did to pass the time until they did.

But my sister died a year ago today. And all these wonderfully specific details died with her.

Loss is a huge part of grieving. Our present and future are changed irrevocably. But what’s slowly dawned on me in the year since Monique’s death is that my past is altered too. In addition to all her other wonderful attributes, my older sister was also a generous conduit into family history for me. Melding her memories with mine, she helped connect images from years gone by, and together we would weave them into a coherent storyline. I took for granted how much this shared memory informed my past and present selves.

Now, this closet story is just a funny little memory, and I’m not racking my brain for the details, but multiply these funny little memories times fifty plus years, and then subtract the person closest to me during that time and it’s like tearing a photo in half or closing one eye while you look at it.

I think memories become smaller when you have no one to share them with. Think of the joy of reminiscing with someone you’re close to. Recounting stories, each of you adding details the other may have forgotten, the surprise of a small specific image suddenly transforming a tale told too often into a completely new story full of color and life. This is sharing at its best.

My father and mother are still alive, and still have their memories intact, which is comforting, but nothing replaces my sister, adding her brushstrokes to a story and giving a whisp of a memory the boost it needs to flower into a complete mental image. All memory is fallible of course, but I’m not in need of concrete facts chiseled in stone. I’m looking for someone to help a paint a picture of the past that is simply an incomplete canvas in my hands alone

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