Memory Keepers, Storytellers, and the Next Generation

My Uncle Jim passed away two days after Christmas. It hit me harder than I thought it would have. We weren't particularly close, but I admired things about him.

He seemed more intellectual than your average country guy in the south. He was an amazing carpenter, and he was an artist. He painted in a style that was all his own. He read. He didn't just flip through hunting magazines, but he read seriously cerebral novels when he wasn't rereading the Bible.

It hit me harder, I think because he was not only my dad's brother-in-law, but he was also his friend. He held his stories. He held experiences with him. He held his friendship, and read him and knew him like he knew his wartime novels. I said to a friend, "The entire generation is dwindling."

And, it is. Another connection to Daddy is gone.

Another connection to Daddy

We talk about Daddy a lot, even though he's been gone for several years now.

We talk about his mischievous ways. We repeat his tall tales. We share the stories of him with those who knew him and knew the devilish twinkle in his eyes. We act out his pranks, sometimes with the victims of his antics in the room yelling out corrections and interjections.

The room is thinning out though, and not in a mandated, social-distancing kind of way. Chats moved to front porches and rocking chairs for that reason, but it is not the reason for the decreasing volume of the crowd. We are now middle-aged storytellers. Our parents, aunts, and uncles aren't quite as immortal as we always thought they were.

Reminiscing on old stories

Stories still include the classics: Daddy putting the horse wagon on the roof of a store, Daddy running a record player to an aunt's house and playing it at a slow speed to make a constant and awful roaring sound.

Daddy's tales of elusive black panthers, wampus cats, and other mythical creatures - all the rest of his "greatest hits." Back in 2015 though, we added some tracks.

Daddy's stroke, Daddy's aphasia, Daddy's dementia, etc. His generation shared and kept those stories as well. They held the stories of his diagnosis and decline. They built new memories and new ramps. They penned adventures to doctor's appointments and nursing home visits without holding his old tricks against him.

New stories were added to the anthology, and they're still told over and over like the early chapters. Only now, another narrator is gone.

Perks of a large family

Daddy grew up in a family of seven siblings. That means all of us first cousins had a dozen aunts and uncles just in that little part of the family by the time we were born.

We all had fourteen in that section of the hierarchy counting our own parents. There are more than twenty kids in my generation on the Grantham side. Yes, I still think of all of us as kids. I probably always will, even though we're all decades past childhood status.

We were blessed with that hilarious, silly, practical joking, loving dozen plus. And, then there were six. With this recent loss accounted for, my siblings and I have six left standing in the generation that raised us alongside our parents.

To the new storytellers

So what are we, the middle-aged storytellers, to do moving forward?

Exactly what they did. Exactly what those six are still doing. We keep the stories. We keep telling them. We serve as memory keepers for those who can no longer remember. We keep those who have passed on alive as we cast them in the mostly true-story plays that we act out a scene at a time to roaring laughter, applause, and the occasional tear.

The latest volume in the collection is dedicated to my Uncle Jim, who had at least thirty years of Daddy and other Grantham stories that he regularly gave us, admission free.

Thanks for the memories, Uncle Jim. We'll take it from here. Tell us about your experience in the comments below, or share your story with the community.