Holding a Life in Your Hands

Reflection from Staff Writer, Nikki Howard

The new year welcomes reflection—what we were grateful for the previous year and what we might change moving forward. And like most, I’ve charted my resolutions with the usual desires of losing weight, walking more, and being more present in the time I have left. These days, my resolutions also encompass my goals within my MFA writing program—primarily the desire to meet my deadlines for a change. However, something else has nagged me this season of reflection and the thought has me wondering how I might spend these next few years more attentively with my father.

I listen to his stories and I ask him the questions I wish I had asked my mother, but with each new interview he starts to stumble over some of the details. Truthfully, my father has never been good with memory recall. We used to tease him about his Mountain Dew habit and how it was starving his brain cells. Even in his younger years, that man couldn’t remember a date, a time, or a place. I’d watch him pad through the house, back and forth, trying to remember every item he needed before leaving, and the act made him late for absolutely everything. God forbid, you send him to the store alone, he might get the first item you asked for, but the second is probably going to get left behind.

As he ages, this pattern has only grown more concerning, especially as it increases in frequency. Although he asserts, “I’m not that old,” I see his age in his graying hair. One of his hands now looks like a claw frozen and he greets me with a limp he tries to hide. The evidence is there and I’m left wondering what symptoms will begin to show when we reach the next decade of his life. When he tells me stories of his youth and he answers questions that I find valuable to the work I’m doing in my writing program, I sweat every time he stutters through one of his memories because I know one day those stories will be just as unreachable as the second item I sent him to the store for.

The losses that come with aging is a sad thing to think about and a sad thing to experience, but at the end of the day, I’m not the only one experiencing it--at least, not yet. He’s at the center of his failing memory. I see the concentration in his brow when he’s trying to remember, and I see the frustration when he can’t. Over the five years I’ve worked with Nora at Memoir for Me, I’ve heard interviews of several clients with similar, and even more severe, difficulties in memory recall. Often when this happens, family members will accompany them during the interview and fill in the gaps of their story, so they can have a fully developed final product that tells their story with the care and detail they deserve.

When I think of my father and his desire to relive those moments, I start to realize how impactful the stories we capture are to someone whose memory fails them. I don’t want to have to remind my father of where he came from. I don’t want his life to exist in flashing fragments, dependent on my ability to piece things together—not because I want to avoid the labor of doing so, but because he deserves to remember the life he’s lived.

How lovely would it be if he could hold his story in his hands and revisit his life whenever he wants to? We know how powerful tangible objects are for memory recall. Whether a photograph, an old letterman jacket, or a recipe card, having something to hold in our hands takes us back.

That’s why the memories we capture are so much more than just words on a page. Yes, the book becomes a part of your familial archive that your children and grandchildren can revisit, but you and your loved one can revist this story, too. You get to hold this life in your hands and revisit memories told in their own voice. This project is as much yours as it is for everyone that comes after you.

As we enter a new year, we’re reminded that we never quite know what lies ahead—who we’ll lose or what we’ll forget—but we can choose what we carry forward. Some memories fade, but your story doesn’t have to. This year, instead of promising to change ourselves, let’s celebrate the amazing people in our lives, just how they show up.

Capture their stories, for your family, for you, and for THEM.

Nikki Howard is a staff writer for Memoir for Me. You can find her writing in You Might Need to Hear This, Voices of the Valley, and The Argyle Literary Magazine. Follow her on Tumblr @laceandlitany and Instagram @nikkimaehoward.