Hey, Rose...

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…


I’m always reluctant to share dreams. People who know more about them than I do are likely to say, “If you dream about that, it means you’re crazy as a loon.” I don’t need to know that from dreams; I have people to tell me that. Occasionally, though, a dream seems right on the mark…

Last night I dreamt that I had become so lost that I could not find my way home. I was in that dream town, familiar, the town where I live, but only in my dreams. It’s a small town, but it has a lot of large church and college buildings. Many of them are neglected or abandoned. My wife had taken my father to the hospital, and I was trying to go there, but I had walked in from the country, and I was a long way from the hospital. I kept seeing familiar sights and sites, but I kept taking wrong turns. To make matters worse, I tried to call Helen to come get me, but I couldn’t remember her phone number. [Anyone familiar with my life can make a LOT out of all that!]

Old people worry a lot about losing memory. I suspect that one reason for my dream at this time is that I had several conversations this week with other old people about how we can’t remember where we put our glasses or parked our cars. [BTW, a good reason to have a landline as well as a cell phone, or at least two cell phones, is so you can find the phone you’ve lost by calling it. I know that for a fact.]

Men rely on wives for memory. Earl Davis, the grand mentor of The Academy of Parish Clergy, used to say, “I have a perfect memory system. It’s called, ‘Martha, where is that?’” I love the story about the old man who was trying to tell a friend about a new restaurant but couldn’t think of its name. “What’s that flower with the nice smell and thorns?” he said. “A rose? Oh, was the restaurant called The Rose?” “No. Hey, Rose, what was the name of that restaurant we went to?”

Pat Meyerholtz says that all of us who went to high school together have good memories; it’s just that we remember the same things in different ways. I like that. It shows how unique we are.

My wife is especially helpful when I worry about losing memory, because she says, “I’ve know you since you were twenty, and you’ve always been this way.” At least, I think that’s helpful.

Of course, forgetting your glasses or the third thing she told you to get at the grocery is just a frustration. Forgetting where home is, that’s tragedy.

After my friend from age ten, Darrel Guimond, was in a car accident that left him brain-damaged, he was able to remember one thing. He told his wife, Linda, “I know you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I understand why we worry about losing memory. We lose our history, and thus our identity. I suspect we worry too much about it, though. Loss is the way of this world, isn’t it? When we are dead, none of us will be remembered for very long, not in the grand scheme of things. My identity and history are limited and declining, just like my memory.

I heard a story about a young adult group where each person was invited to pick a card from the deck to say who s/he was. One picked a Jack, another a deuce, another a King. One young man picked up the whole deck, turned it over, and said, “It doesn’t matter which card I am. What matters is whose hand I’m in.”

The good news is this: God doesn’t forget. God knew Darrel even when Darrel didn’t know himself. God remembers even the sparrow that falls to the ground. God knows me, my identity, my history. Even the hairs of my head are numbered. Granted, that’s easier in my case, but still…

JRMcF

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{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

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