Notes from my Knapsack 5-16-24
Jeff Gill
Memorial Day is a time for everyone
___
For almost 160 years, Granville has come together as a community at Maple Grove Cemetery to remember.
We have many occasions for memory: the Fourth of July takes us back nearly 250 years to remember our national roots, and Christmas season has a number of events recalling us to our own history, long or short, from childhood to more recent celebrations, as well as a birth two thousand years ago.
Commencements are a time of remembering a student's arc through school, and often those attending or even presiding recall their own graduations. We have those in this month, too.
What I think is a powerful act of communal memory, though, is our tradition of gathering at Maple Grove at 11 am on Memorial Day. It is May 27 this year, the Monday holiday we've made it, with a procession from Broadway and Main at our village core, on to the east then down Pearl St. to what was once named "Solemn Street" and into the cemetery.
For some, this is the only time they visit this place; others of us have been there many times, laying to rest what we call "earthly remains" and trusting to heavenly hopes for a greater part of those we love.
Memorial Day, once called Decoration Day, is a time of remembering those who died while serving others, rooted in the losses of the Civil War from which our specific tradition begins. It picked up a pattern of getting long-untended graves "decorated" or tended; I have many memories of traveling around the rural roads of Illinois with my mother and grandmother, a flat or two of geraniums in the trunk of the car, planting them at family markers after pulling weeds and the grass grown long close to the stone.
My father was very intent on honoring Memorial Day itself; he was not a fan of the Monday holiday bill that moved a number of federal observances to the end of what are now "holiday weekends," but he reconciled himself to it over the years as a pragmatic solution. In our community, where I grew up, Memorial Day had largely lapsed as a civic event, and he was a leader in bringing it back as a public occasion, with solemn ceremony and patriotic salutes.
As a lover of Civil War history, and a re-enactor himself with the full uniform and Springfield muzzleloader, he had most of General Order Number 11 committed to memory, especially Gen. John Logan's lines about how "If other eyes grow dull and other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remains in us."
That commission, given the Grand Army of the Republic in 1868, was one my father felt strongly about fulfilling; it is a sacred trust of sorts that Granville has honored through the years. We will be one link in that chain for 2024. I am honored to be your speaker this year, as we gather, and remember.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he remembers many things each Memorial Day. Tell him what the occasion reminds you of at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Saturday, May 11, 2024
Monday, May 06, 2024
Faith Works 5-10-24
Faith Works 5-10-24
Jeff Gill
A matter of identification
___
My mother doesn't know who I am.
She lives with my sister, and Mom doesn't know her all the time, either; she will argue with her about whether my sister is coming home for dinner.
One of my brothers is there most weekdays helping care for her, and she doesn't know him, but calls him "a friend of the family." True enough, as far as that goes.
We suspect there's in her current phase of dementia a sort of face blindness: Mom has told people after I've left, even the next day, that her son Jeff came to visit, even when during that visit she'd ask me if my parents lived nearby. She has trouble coming up with exactly who people are when she is looking at them, but often later has a recollection of their identity.
The term dementia is an awkward fit, just because of assumptions and stereotypes that go with the word. Mom can talk to you in coherent, complete sentences (though the silences are getting longer at times), and she's more mobile in some ways than she was for years before she moved in with my sister. If you don't know the backstory, you could sit and talk to her for a goodly stretch and not know her mind is seriously impaired.
But both of her parents have been gone over forty years, yet she talks about them coming over to stay for the night, or going to teach for her father, who was a school superintendent almost up to his death in 1970. In her mind these days, she taught until last year (she retired in 1999) and drove until a few weeks ago (we don't think she'd driven herself anywhere since 2017, definitely not since we brought her to Indiana in 2020).
Sometimes when I describe the current situation, people will say "oh, my, that's terrible: that's just the worst thing." And I don't want to argue exactly with such sympathy. It's odd, to say the very least.
Yet there's a fair amount to be thankful for, and I don't believe I'm just putting a good face on things. Mom was never a big fan of new experiences in the years we knew her (I'll leave a window open from before our childhoods), and if we took her to a restaurant or location she didn't like, she'd insist on leaving fairly quickly. She preferred what she liked, the more familiar the better.
In this current incarnation, she's open to possibilities. Last summer I took her to a restaurant where my brother was performing, and we got there early to eat. It was a college town bar cum bistro, concrete floored and loud, with food served in baskets. The Mom I've known would have hated it. The Mom I have now? She was fascinated by it, and pleased at her food when it arrived. She ate approximately three micrograms of it, but that's par for the course. I recall many a meal where she ate the whole thing, grimly condemning the food, the service, and the location; these days, she goes with my sister to outdoor performance venues and strange houses of friends of my sister, and she's all in.
In general, she's content. I might even use the word happy. And here's the question: would I rather my mother know who I am, and be miserable, or that she be happy, but uncertain why I'm sitting with her watching the Cubs play? The latter is working out just fine.
My mother is happy, and that's a blessing. May you find a blessing in your mother's life worth holding onto this Mother's Day.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; yes, he's learned a great deal about memory care issues the last few years. Tell him how you mark family celebrations at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
A matter of identification
___
My mother doesn't know who I am.
She lives with my sister, and Mom doesn't know her all the time, either; she will argue with her about whether my sister is coming home for dinner.
One of my brothers is there most weekdays helping care for her, and she doesn't know him, but calls him "a friend of the family." True enough, as far as that goes.
We suspect there's in her current phase of dementia a sort of face blindness: Mom has told people after I've left, even the next day, that her son Jeff came to visit, even when during that visit she'd ask me if my parents lived nearby. She has trouble coming up with exactly who people are when she is looking at them, but often later has a recollection of their identity.
The term dementia is an awkward fit, just because of assumptions and stereotypes that go with the word. Mom can talk to you in coherent, complete sentences (though the silences are getting longer at times), and she's more mobile in some ways than she was for years before she moved in with my sister. If you don't know the backstory, you could sit and talk to her for a goodly stretch and not know her mind is seriously impaired.
But both of her parents have been gone over forty years, yet she talks about them coming over to stay for the night, or going to teach for her father, who was a school superintendent almost up to his death in 1970. In her mind these days, she taught until last year (she retired in 1999) and drove until a few weeks ago (we don't think she'd driven herself anywhere since 2017, definitely not since we brought her to Indiana in 2020).
Sometimes when I describe the current situation, people will say "oh, my, that's terrible: that's just the worst thing." And I don't want to argue exactly with such sympathy. It's odd, to say the very least.
Yet there's a fair amount to be thankful for, and I don't believe I'm just putting a good face on things. Mom was never a big fan of new experiences in the years we knew her (I'll leave a window open from before our childhoods), and if we took her to a restaurant or location she didn't like, she'd insist on leaving fairly quickly. She preferred what she liked, the more familiar the better.
In this current incarnation, she's open to possibilities. Last summer I took her to a restaurant where my brother was performing, and we got there early to eat. It was a college town bar cum bistro, concrete floored and loud, with food served in baskets. The Mom I've known would have hated it. The Mom I have now? She was fascinated by it, and pleased at her food when it arrived. She ate approximately three micrograms of it, but that's par for the course. I recall many a meal where she ate the whole thing, grimly condemning the food, the service, and the location; these days, she goes with my sister to outdoor performance venues and strange houses of friends of my sister, and she's all in.
In general, she's content. I might even use the word happy. And here's the question: would I rather my mother know who I am, and be miserable, or that she be happy, but uncertain why I'm sitting with her watching the Cubs play? The latter is working out just fine.
My mother is happy, and that's a blessing. May you find a blessing in your mother's life worth holding onto this Mother's Day.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; yes, he's learned a great deal about memory care issues the last few years. Tell him how you mark family celebrations at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
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