Do you ever feel the obligation to remember?

Yeah I know this pressure to remember…
I sometimes feel like I have to rember a special event, I feel like I have to remenber the pain of this time and it’s a good feeling if I remember… It’s weird

I wish I could remember things, but I don’t.

I understand what you mean. I sometimes feel obliged to be the Keeper of the Memories, almost as if claiming an ancient tribal role, because I do hold onto them and rehearse them and deliver them up when called upon. Even though we know that people’s vivid separate recollections of the same things often just don’t match up, we feel so very sure of our own. When emotions and subjective interpretations are part of the mix, it’s impossible to keep a clear fix on objective data.

I, for one, don’t see much difference between memory and identity. That’s why it seems so important: if we lose those memories, we lose ourselves. Other people and certain places (such as a childhood home or a former school) and even our pets belong to a shared history that seems to close when they go. I think this is one reason why certain celebrity deaths affect us so strongly.

I also keep a lot of stuff that really has no value other than being a trigger for certain memories and a kind of concrete evidence of that past time or place. This goes, I’m afraid, way beyond souvenirs.

My mother died five years ago. At the one-year anniversary mark, I started writing a series of themed memoirs, about her specifically, and about my father, who had died almost exactly 25 years earlier, and about our shared childhood. I was the eldest of four. For ten days I sent one of those stories per day to each of my three siblings.

I spent hours combing the Web for photos of iconic items such as the type of mixing bowls and baking dishes my mother used, the type of shoes my father wore, and toys and games such as marbles and Authors. Those are the little ordinary everyday things that really hold associations for us—things we pay no attention to and never take pictures of, unlike all those identical family photos of Thanksgiving dinnertables and somebody holding somebody else’s baby.

About two years afterward, I reread my memoir. I was astonished at how much detail I’d already forgotten in just two years. How much more must have been lost and distorted over the decades prior to that.

Yes. One of the sadder things about the end of my marriage is that the person who shared those memories with me is no longer here. Also, that there are things that only my parents would know and they are gone.

That is one reason why I keep a daily diary.

For me what bothers me is no one to pass the memories to. No matter how much I remember; I have no children and neither does my sister’ and the old photo albums, and beautiful jewelry, and trinkets from the travels my family made will be nothing. It will all disappear.

You shouldn’t have to shoulder the job of Collective Childhood Historian. No one should. Just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or wasn’t special or that you should feel guilty.

No. I do not. A life lived is a life lived. Some place great value on the past. That’s okay, but in my opinion, it is more important for each of us to live in the present and embrace our own lives. People in the past lived their lives. Just live your life now. That is all that is required of you. Its good to honor the past. Its not good to wrap it around your ankle like a ball and chain.

I feel like the keeper of the family museum since my kids moved far away and my spouse and I split up. Sometimes it feels like something I want to do, sometimes it feels like a weight.

Just wanted to pop in and say thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts on this. Sometimes I’m quiet. But that doesn’t mean I’m not listening or that I’m not grateful for your words. Just that I don’t always know what to say.