Reminders

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. This holiday holds mixed emotions for me. With every loved one who moves heavenside to join our family there, the holiday stretches to include a pondering of each and how their deaths change the way I live. I feel increasingly responsible for keeping them alive in my memory and the memories of my family members.

In attempting to remind everyone of our heavenside loved ones, I've surrounded myself with physical remembrances that work to keep these people in my thoughts. My father's books, my mother's wedding ring, and my niece's bundt cake recipe are just the tip of the memorial iceberg.

This weekend, I have been thinking especially about my mother-in-law, Zenna Mickelsen Longhurst. She passed away in 2017, but if she were still with us, tomorrow would be her 100th birthday. She made it to 92, which was pretty darn amazing. Zenna was a child of the depression, a bride of World War II, a mother of seven, a farmer's wife, and a hard-working woman who grew gardens and preserved food to feed her family and gave them each the gift of music.

At the age of 45, she decided to be a painter. She began creating with oils, and after she had conquered the medium she moved to watercolor, and oh, what beautiful creations she left behind as reminders of her. After she passed away, her seven children had the task of divvying up her masterpieces. We came home with 30 pieces of her collection. That would be roughly 210 pieces from her home, let alone the many pieces she had gifted or sold to others. She was a prolific artist with seemingly endless inspiration.

My husband and I moved six months ago - just ten miles south of the home where we'd lived for 30 years and raised our family of four. Among the truckloads of life's possessions we moved to our new home were those 30 pieces of her artwork.

She had a local gallery do a show of her work when she was in her eighties, and our family gathered photographs of all the pieces we could locate to create a book of her work, but she was never famous. Her work never hung in a major gallery or museum, but the accolades of the world weren't important to her, and I know why.

She was creating reminders for her family.

Moving into a new home after 30 years somewhere else takes some work. All our possessions and reminders of our loved ones that had long settled into "their place" in our old home, were rather suddenly plopped in the basement storage room of the new home while we took our time figuring out where their "new place" should be.

It took us months to manage it, and a few stragglers are still wrapped in bubble wrap, waiting for their place of honor, but the majority of her work has now been hung. Every time I turn a corner or enter a room, there is a reminder of her.

Not all our loved ones can be painters, but what have they left behind that we can use as a reminder of them? Maybe it's a nickname only they used for you, maybe it's an old letter, or a photograph, maybe it's the bowl they always used for Thanksgiving cranberry sauce, or a phrase they used so repeatedly you now hear it in their voice every time someone says it.

Whatever is a reminder for you, use it. Keep it close. Place it where you can be reminded, because the memories of these loved ones who've gone on before us still enrich our lives.

And one more reminder . . . what are you leaving behind that will serve as reminders when you've joined the heavenside throng? It's smart not to delay, because none of us know when the everyday things of life will cease. We must make memories while we can.

Happy Memorial Day to all of you. I hope it's filled with memorable moments!