Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge is one of those books that tell a precious truth in disguise.   In Men Fox’s children’s book, Wilfrid is a young boy who lives next to an “old peoples” home and he knows everyone who lives there.  His favourite person to visit is 96-year-old Miss Nancy and he tells her all his secrets. He heard his mother and father say that Miss Nancy has lost her memory.  Wilfrid doesn’t even know what a memory is so he asks everyone he knows to find out in his desire to help Miss Nancy find her’s.  Listen to the story here to discover what Wilfred learned and shared.   

In the past two weeks, I’ve been fortunate to listen myself to memories of four women in particular who have lived decades longer than me.  I realize how important it is for me to attentively listen to what I imagine is a mixture of fact and fiction lived out in their real lives. I envision the years have reshaped those memories. Like Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, we all refashion what we have been given to remember and to share.

I believe that what we remember is a way of listening to our lives. 

In A Room to Remember, Buechner writes,

In one sense the past is …over and done with, but in another sense,… it is not done with us. Every person we have ever known, every place we have been, everything that has ever happened to us— it all lives and breathes deep in us somewhere whether we like it or not, and sometimes it doesn’t take much to bring it to the surface in bits and pieces…Times too beautiful to tell or too terrible.

These are the kind of memories that come more or less on their own and apart from any choice we consciously make. But in A Room to Remember, Buechner proposes remembering as a conscious act for good in that the power of remembering becomes our own power.  And that is the essence of the stories my four dear friends choose to share with me.

Sometimes we are reluctant to talk about what really matters.  We don’t always tell the whole story.  Even in my journal, sitting alone, I disguise parts of my life because they are difficult to face. We leave out the parts that, for some reason, we are hesitate to say out loud.

The strength of the women who trusted me to listen is that they are remembering on purpose.  They are consciously recalling years that have gone by but are not gone.  Each story they share is felt and fresh and alive with both who they were at their best or their worst and who they have become. 

What do I choose to remember?

I, too, am encouraged to remember what makes me laugh and cry and warm with wonder. Remembering what is precious as gold with a new understanding of who I am and given new strength for what comes next.