As memory evaporates, what's left is precious

By MICHELE MILLER, Times Staff Writer
Published September 24, 2007

It is said that you can't go home again, and you know that for sure when you're standing in a sweltering room that smells faintly of urine, having the same conversations over and over again with a dear old aunt whose memory is falling away in chunks.

I should have made this trip sooner, I think, remembering the letter she sent last summer that was dated 1972.

Since the death of my mother 22 years ago, her older sister - my Aunt Phyllis - has been the bearer of family updates. The teller of stories old and new, often penned in beautiful script and mailed south with old black-and-white family photographs that now adorn my old upright piano.

Being close-knit was first and foremost.

"It's important for family to keep in touch," she would say.

So we did.

Now in a place they call a rehab center, my aunt is stuck somewhere back in the decade when I was a teen. I note that her short-term memory is pretty much gone when she thanks me for the flowers I brought and a minute later remarks how nice it was for the orderly to bring that same bouquet with breakfast.

Thinking it might nudge some recall, I share my latest family picture taken at the eldest's college graduation. "That's a nice picture of you," she tells me. Then, "Who are these kids? Who's the guy in the middle with the cap? And that guy with the Santa Claus beard - is that my David?"

That's my husband with the beard, not her son David, I tell her. Those are my three kids and the guy with the graduation cap, why, that's my eldest, Jesse.

Remember?

"Oh," she says, then asks how I like the nice flowers they brought with breakfast. She wants to know how my two brothers are doing and is surprised to hear they are both living in Maine. She wonders when my mother is going to visit and where her husband, Fred, is off to.

Then she's back to looking at my family picture with the random kids and the guy with the beard. "That's a nice picture of you," she tells my sister who is visiting, too. "Is that my David with the beard?" she asks before letting go a hearty chuckle. "Who's he trying to kid?"

It's kind of like being in the movie Groundhog Day, sans the laughs. Well, the last part's not altogether true, because after a bit you buck up and do what's always been done.

It's family tradition - at wakes, funerals, hospital waiting rooms and the like. The Irish way, some say, or that of long-suffering New Englanders who have learned that sometimes the best way to cope means stepping over the sadness.

There's no sense reminding my aunt that my brothers have been living in Maine for well over 20 years now. That I'm all grown up and married with kids. That my mom and her husband have both passed on.

It's just too hurtful and in a weird sort of way, my aunt seems content - cheerful, even.

So the next time she asks, I tell my aunt that the flowers they brought to her at breakfast are indeed lovely and isn't it grand that they think so highly of her around this place. My mother will be by to see her sometime soon, I'm sure. She's just so busy.

My Uncle Fred, well, being a firefighter and all, he's probably off working an extra shift like he often does. And that guy with the beard in the picture - the one she thinks is her son David because my husband and kids have been erased from her memory - why, he is quite a kidder and handsome, to boot.

"In fact, if he weren't my cousin ..."

And as family tradition would have it, we share a laugh, stuck somewhere in the decade of my teens.

Michele Miller can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6251 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6251. Her e-mail address is miller@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 23, 2007, 20:38:46]