Does it Make You Wonder?

By Al Horn

Note: This piece was written before my father passed away in early December. I feel its message is just as appropriate today, if not more so.

If you are over the age of forty and have children old enough to have children of their own then you will soon wonder what it is you will be remembered for when you are gone. I'm not trying to sound morbid here. I am genuinely interested.

Our son-in-law passed away last spring leaving a five-year-old daughter and a son who just turned twenty-two months old. The girl will have memories that will stay with her for a time. By the time she becomes a teenager those will be distant memories. Some of them may not even be accurate. The boy will surely have no memories to speak of. Again, I am not trying to be morbid, just trying to get you, the reader of this narration, to reflect upon the memories you have of your parents and grandparents. Some of you may have even been fortunate enough to have spent some time with a great-grandparent.

I have vague memories of one great-grandmother I met at the age of two or three. My siblings have no memories of her. As a fan of science fiction, I have often wondered what it would be like to slip back in time to the body of my young self while sitting with her. The questions that I would have asked. Did less technology mean things were less exciting? Was it all work and no play living through the beginning of a new century as we are today? Would I be surprised at her answers or would she just validate any prior research? I think it would be fun to find out.

My grandfather from the south often told me that the history books I brought home from school had many things wrong. I was too young to understand at the time. I look back at what is being taught about the sixties and seventies and feel that things are being left out or they are being told not quite the way I remember. Am I feeling the same way he did? He was seventy at the time and had more to say about the depression years from the standpoint of living through it. Even though he was advanced in years his mind was still sharp as a tack. I remember at the age of fourteen he was talking with my parents while playing a game of checkers with me. At about the time I thought I was going to finally beat him due to his lack of concentration, he wiped out half my pieces. He never lost his place in the conversation.

I wish now that I could go back and ask him how things differed by his accounts. I have many good memories of him but still wish I knew more about him. Two years after this episode he passed away while on the road to see the country. I heard many a story about how he lived his life at his funeral. Many things had surprised me. I often wonder at what more I could have learned had I had the time or inclination to ask for more details.

Several years back, at a family reunion, I asked my brothers and sister what they remembered about him. Some of the answers were the same but they all had some recollection that the others had forgotten or had not been there personally to experience. Several cousins had different stories.

Once the pieces were put together, we felt we had a reasonable assembly of the man. He was remembered as old, sometimes grouchy but usually attentive to what we had to say. He always had a nickel or dime to give each of us and was more than happy to load us up in his car or truck to take us somewhere to spend said coins. He was a disciplinarian who could deliver a punchline with a straight face. His children loved and respected him even when they disagreed with him.

I think we felt good about having firmly placed this man in our past. I wonder now how my grandchildren will remember me in thirty or forty years.