The Mingled Memories of November

We have passed the mid-point of the month. Where I live, the ground is now white with snow. It feels like winter has come early this year but I think I might say that every year. At the first of this week I was digging the last of my dahlia tubers and trimming the scraggly mums. Yesterday I shoveled the snow aside so I could plant my spring bulbs. Seriously, I did that.

November always seems like a sad month to me. It kicks off with All Saints Day when, within the sugar hangover of Halloween we remember all those people who make up ‘the great cloud of witnesses’. Then there is Remembrance Day. November is also the birthday month of some dearly departed family members – that always tweaks a bit sorrow. November carries with it overcast skies and dropping temperatures. And then there is the time change bringing darkness an hour earlier each afternoon. Sigh.

On Remembrance Day this year I chose to not go to the cenotaph in town. It is in a beautiful setting in Memorial Park, right in the middle of town. The gathering of people, the laying of wreaths, the readings, are all quite moving but I chose instead to spend the time alone at home. At 11:00 I was raking the leaves on my front lawn and I spent that time remembering. As I did, I realized that some of the memories were not my own but memories of what others have told me. One memory was of my mother remembering her mother, my grandmother, who seldom showed deep emotion, but often spent Remembrance Day in tears as she thought of the youth of her generation that went to World War 1 and then the youth of her children’s generation that went off to World War 2. Another was hearing the stories of an uncle I never knew who went off to World War 2 as a young airman and never came home, instead he is buried somewhere in France. My parents and my aunts and uncle would speak of him with fondness. I feel like I knew him, not from my own memory but from memories shared by others.

Remembering is a funny thing – what we remember, how we remember and, even more interestingly, how our memory varies from another even though we both participated in the same event. Also interesting is what sparks a memory. The other day, I opened a box and there was a photo I hadn’t seen for years. It brought back not only the event and the faces of the people gathered there but also the recollection of the sound of their laughter, the scent of their perfume, the tone of their voice. It sparked the memory of the journey to get to the event. It triggered other gatherings with those same people. It teased out memory after memory of laughter and tears, of arguments and joyous reunions. Memories all mingled together.

How many times a day do we begin a sentence with, “I remember”, “I am trying to remember” “I can’t remember”? November – the month of mingled memories. November – as the darkness closes in and much of our environment slips into hibernation we too have the opportunity to go into those caves of memory and think of those places and those people we have loved.

Today promises a cozy afternoon by the fire, a cup of herbal tea, maybe a cookie, and conjuring up the mingled memories of the past. I wish rich and wonderful day dreaming to you.