Tag Archives: Memoir

I sat and watched the incredible farewell to Queen Elizabeth. I was just drained. The details, the pomp, the myrtle in the wreath, the breaking of the staff, the lone bagpiper. The tradition was thick and satisfying, and I wept. To be sure I am a sucker for any show of military precision – bring on the drums – and wild about a man in uniform. But this Yank’s show of mourning speaks more about stirred memories than some misplaced national pride.

Friends know that I am a staunch Anglophile but are mildly surprised to find it preceded my marrying a Brit. It seems odd considering my grandmother emigrated from County Cavan, close to Northern Ireland in location and spirit. In fact, whispers of gun running for the IRA involving distant cousins are woven through family lore. But I was weaned on all things British by my mother, from milky tea to classic British comedies.

Mom felt a modest affinity with the queen and saw herself as living a life in parallel. Elizabeth, who was just a year older than my mother, became monarch in 1952, the same year my parents married. The end of WWII was just over their shoulders – mom had volunteered as an Aircraft Warning Service plane spotter and Elizabeth drove ambulances with the British military. The war was a great leveler and brought the Princess closer to all who lived through it, even a young American girl helping the war effort across the Atlantic.

As time moved forward, the queen and her consort had four children, three boys and one girl who was second born, all mirrored by my parents. This did not go unnoticed by my mother. She would keep tabs on all things English and I was the better sponge for all this. While my brothers were into hard rock and out trolling the neighborhood with friends, I was gobbling up episodes of “To the Manor Born” and “Open All Hours.” Our east coast PBS was British-centric and it was something I was able to share with my mom.

The passion remains. I stream Acorn and Britbox, my soap of choice is Eastenders, I can recite any dialog from Midsomer Murders, and our VPN subscription has become my new best friend. (wink, wink)

So, while I admired this sad but stunning send off by the British people, special memories framed my own moment of remembrance.

I was visiting with my 96 year-old grandmother at her room in the care facility. She was recounting her childhood in Ireland, every moment crystal clear right down to the burnished gate and the blades of grass, a variegated carpet of green. She sat in her Queen Ann chair, back straight with as much dignity as she always had. She could have been sitting in her living room 20 years earlier. She would occasionally stop and ask “Whose daughter are you, now then?” I always gave her the same answer and she would nod, look out the window, and continue.

Like bricks tossed in the yard for a future build, my memories are always there for me. Snapshots fill my head, yet calling them stones seems to better fit the weighty things. They need heft to keep them from floating away.

I realize now that, like my grandmother, most of the heavier ones were gathered when I was young, before I started to drive and my static eye was replaced by endless clinical scanning. Scenes of a town that no longer exists, flashes of family with Christmas trees and birthday cakes, travel logs from the seat of my trusty bike, idyllic snaps of trolling low tides from annual holidays at a low-end shack on the waters edge – all added to the pile. 

With these inner keepsakes, I would move forward into new and different roles. Retirement meant hitting refresh yet again and creating another story. As I changed work, life, home, I happily toted my weight with me to set up shop and build a comforting new wall to make the place my own. That is what we do. It’s the old lamp, the rug worn at the corners, boxes of yesterday, the memory stones. That is how I have always changed the new into a comfortable new normal. But the wall does not keep me in, it’s behind me, allowing me to walk about to see what is out there, knowing I have the familiar with me. It is my strength and the thing that gives me depth and balance in a new landscape.

As I think back, I can see that I don’t remember everything in my life, either because of a multitasking existence or age is just beginning to take hold. With some good genes and a little bit of luck, my memory stones will keep, so I too can share the stories of a life well lived.