So much of what we treasure in life lies in our desire to remember. As parents we collect locks of hair from our children, baby teeth, report cards. We photograph the ordinary and the incredible. We stockpile the ticket stubs, show programs and bits of minutiae that have become important to us. We feel a connection to the past – to our past, to our parents’ past, to our grandparents’ past. It’s where we come from. We don’t want to forget. We don’t want to take for granted.
I remember when my grandmother passed away. My aunt asked me what I would like to have. I had photos. I had jewelry. I had an old grandmother clock she had given me. That day the thing I asked for was a bit of Grandma’s handwriting. Of value to no one but me, her handwriting was what I didn’t have. I wanted to keep that memory and all that came along with it – the birthday, Christmas and anniversary cards she sent. The postcards. The scribbles on the backs of photos. The shopping lists she made out. The checks she sometimes sent. So much I had taken for granted and had lost or thrown out and then regretted. It is a piece of her I wanted and have kept. Now I wish for the sound of her voice and the smell of her perfume.
You see memory keeping is a thing we all do to some degree, and maybe more so as we grow older and begin to forget the things we thought we wouldn’t. That’s what I’m doing here – memory keeping through scrapbooking, journaling, planning – and much of it through digital avenues. That’s the world we live in after all – and maybe a surefire way to safeguard some of those precious remembrances.
Of course some of us keep memories for those that come after – those that someday might want to know the stories of our lives. Those that will miss our voices and our handwriting. We keep those memories too. Because someday someone will want to know who we were or to remember the past and treasure it. They might want to look back too and say ‘I remember that.’