The Power of Memory: Connecting Past, Present, and Heritage

Memory is such an important part of who we are. Our memories reveal the substance of our life to date. There are memories we’d like to forget and never remember. Others we venerate as special because they have significantly impacted us in such a positive way.

There’s a beautiful scene in Brian Friel’s play Philadelphia, Here I Come in which memory has the potential to become a bridge between an estranged father and son. Sadly, the same memory is interpreted differently by each of them. What should have been remembered as a shared experience only highlights their separation. This desire to use memory as a means of bonding is vitally important.

We see this a lot at wakes. Stories based on memories of the deceased are a way of reinforcing a connectedness between loved ones. Death may have separated us from the person who has passed, but their memory lives on. When remembering the dead, the Jewish tradition uses the phrase “of blessed memory” to signify that the deceased person lives on in our memories.

It’s not only on sad occasions such as wakes that memory functions to cement relationships. As an ex-pat, when I reconnect with my family, we quickly establish our connection by sharing memories. My sister visited recently from the UK. As siblings who are getting up there in years, we have a lot of memories to draw from. While this process strengthens bonds between us, it also provides us with memories we may have forgotten or never heard of.

When we remember those we have lost, we’re grateful for the experience of remembering. Our parents, now deceased, are usually the focal point of our shared experience. Some of these stories from the past have been retold over and over again; never getting old, never becoming tiresome. And, it’s our way of honoring those who have gone before us. The sharing of these memories brings us closer to those who are no longer with us. It also validates our remembrance of them.

On this last visit, we were discussing our mother. She was a true woman of substance. A mother of 10 with eight surviving childhood, she was quite a character. As children, we spent much of our time with our maternal grandmother, Rosie. She was the matriarch of the family. She ruled the roost over all of us. When discussing our grandmother’s indomitable personality, I remembered something my mother had told me. My mother, like my grandmother, was terrified of storms. The slightest sound of thunder drove them to their knees in prayer.

St. Columba

Among the Derry city’s storytellers and mythmakers, it was rumored that Saint Columba promised that no one inside the city boundary would ever be hit by lightning. (This is one of those cases when the memory of what someone said in the 6th or 7th Century might be a little faulty or imagined for effect.) And, since we lived outside of the city boundary, and outside of the protection of St. Columba, we were not safe. Moving outside the saint’s protection meant that my grandmother and her family were now at risk of being struck down by a bolt of lightning.

To protect herself against this possible tragedy, Rosie had a plan; at the first rattle of thunder, she lined all the family up and doused them in holy water. Her plan appeared to work, even if the method wasn’t always carried out as it should be. My mother remembered one occasion when a storm broke out and the family was lined up to be blessed. As Rosie prayed, she threw holy water over each of them. Her hysteria made her deaf to her children’s protests. The more they complained, the more holy water she threw at them. When she finally stopped, her nose began to twitch. The holy water she had dispensed so much of had a strange smell. In the heat of her excitement, she had reached for the wrong container and drenched herself and the children in turpentine.

This memory came out of nowhere. It was buried among other memories for just such a time as this. What I remember most about my mother telling that story was her laughter. She was reliving a moment, a special time in her youth. And, as she did, she celebrated the memory of her deceased mother. Such memories take the edge of sadness and grief.

My mother was a Derry woman, whereas my father was from Donegal. My sister reminded me of how dismissive we were of his rural background. The furthest we got into Donegal was Buncrana, which was 14 miles away from Derry. My father’s family came from a small fishing village, Burtonport, in south Donegal. We grew up listening to his stories about this magical place he belonged to.

Narnia

A true Irishman, he dressed up his past to look better than it was. Even if we were in awe of his stories, he might as well have told us that he was from Narnia. We had no idea of where he came from. My sister and I remembered the first time we ventured beyond the usual Derry summer encampment of Buncrana and into the wilds of Donegal. It felt foreign to us. His village was full of strange characters, at least that’s how they appeared to us. Once we began to spend more time visiting his native county, our attitude towards it changed, and we started to see the beauty of the land and its soul.

The place we ridiculed as backward and parochial was rich in culture and tradition. On a small island, overlooking the wild Atlantic, the memories of our clan lie in a remote cemetery. Seeing their graves, I was overcome by a deep reverence for those who were a part of our lineage, and I understood that what we store inside is not just a memory of ourselves. We also house the memories of our cultural heritage.