They're All That's Left You

My mother and father, in a picture that captures them at their best.

Memories.  In the end, that's all you're left with.  But what a powerful and loving thing it can be.  Full of fondness of the good times, it keeps the light of love on, and gives your life context and meaning, provides wisdom and knowledge, a sense of where you come from and where you're going.

I've lost both my parents.  This is a common human experience, especially as we ourselves age.  No matter what age it happens at, it's not easy to take.  Whether you're thirty or seventy, you feel like you're their child, and that they're forever your parents.  Even when I was in my fifties, my mother would refer to Alison and me as "you kids."  She would say to us, "Now you kids go out and have a good date together, and we'll watch Benjamin."

My mother passed October 19, 2008 and my father September 22, 2013.  It still seems like it just happened to me.  I still instinctively reach for the phone when I have good news to share about myself or other family members.  

We all inherit things from our parents.  Money, material things, physical and character traits.  I inherited all these things from my parents (well, not so much the money, but that is by far the least important), but in addition, from my father, I inherited the greatest gift of all.  Memories.  About a dozens carefully maintained binders filled with pictures and stories, going back to the first generation of Straits to arrive here in the middle of the 17th century.

I have pictures and stories going back to the beginning, putting real flesh on my distant ancestors, and real details to my grandparents and great grandparents, and spell out in fascinating pictures and words the experiences of growing up on a farm in Michigan, through all the events and major turmoils of the twentieth century.  I am truly blessed to have these, to add to them, and someday pass them to my own descendants.

At one time, I was posting these onto The Strait Line.  My Dad was a gifted writer and storyteller, and although I did some consolidation and organization, they were basically his words and research.  I need to get back to doing that again.  If nothing else, the act of doing so, reinvigorates and freshens the memories for myself.

Recently, I had the privilege of visiting with Ms. Grace Lee, an honored member of the Okefenokee Heritage Guild, now in her late eighties.  Like my father, she has collected a large volume of stories and pictures of her family and of growing up on a farm, for her in Southeast Georgia.  Her writing is clean, crisp, imaginative and vivid. She makes the memories come alive, like they are in the room with you.  I am hoping that we can present her stories soon to the Heritage Guild of the Okefenokee Heritage Center, and that we can organize them into a book to be available at the Heritage Center.

This, whether from Grace Lee, or my father, or countless others who have important memories to share with us, is not just an amusement to occupy theirs or our time.  It is the very fabric of who we are, where we've come from and where we're going.  It is the true stuff of immortality, outside of any spiritual realm, of how we continue to live and influence, how we are honored and respected, how we share and care, a celebration of the interconnectedness and purpose of life.

And here is another reason we preserve the memories.  That is my niece, Tiffany, holding newly born Bailey Margaret Burris, what would be the first great-grandchild for my mother and father.  It is something they would have devoutly loved to see.  Part of my mother's memories are ingrained into Bailey's name, with her middle name coming from my mother.  She will never her see her great-grandparents. But she will know them.  Yes, she will.  Tiffany, and my sister, Carol, and myself, and the living notebooks that my father provided, will see to that.

Memories.

They're all that's left us.

But oh, what a treasure they can be.