Family Stories: Keeping Memories Alive After Loss

We set up lawn chairs at the cemetery this morning, coffee in hand, my sons and I, with Ro and Brookie running between the headstones the way kids do at places that are supposed to feel solemn. Cloud cover for once, none of the early heat that usually has us wilting before nine. We weren’t in a hurry. We never are anymore. Neither of the grandkids ever met Brenda. Both of them know her anyway.

Eleven years. Long enough that grief has changed shape without disappearing.

My sons started talking, the way we do every year at that spot. We recalled that Mom would be crushing it with grandkids. We recalled that she’d have been the loudest voice in the stands at Liam’s gold medal game, no contest. We recalled how she used to meet a stranger in a grocery line and leave with their whole life story. She had that gift of meeting people in the moment. Most people collect small talk. Brenda collected people.

We sat there naming the traits the youngest grandkids share with a woman they’ve only met through photographs and stories. Ro has her intelligence, her curiosity, the way she can’t leave a question alone until she’s turned it over from every side. Brookie lights up a room the same way Grammy did, walks in and the whole place shifts toward her. It’s strange and it’s good, watching someone’s character keep showing up in people who never got to know her, although they say that they do know her from photos and stories.

I have this photo of Brenda walking hand in hand with Liam at Pender Harbour, just weeks before she died. He was small enough then that her hand swallowed his. I’ve looked at that photo a thousand times. This morning I found myself picturing a different one: Grammy’s hand in Liam’s now, except he’s 6’2″ and she’s the one having to reach up, gold medal still around his neck, and I know exactly what she’d be saying to him. Something like, “I never doubted it for a second. I’ve been praying over you since before you could skate and God definitely has His hand on you”.

That’s the thing about loss that nobody warns you of early on. It doesn’t stay still. Some years it’s sharp. This year it was more like company, sitting there with sons who are still, eleven years on, telling stories about their mother because the stories are still true.

I don’t have a tidy way to close this. Brenda isn’t here for the part of the story where Landon is moving to Powell River, Mac is kicking it in Tae Kwan Do, Georgia is caring like her in so many ways, Ellie has her grace and smile,or where a gold medal gets won and we reimagined Liam’s 6’2″ hand in hers instead of a small one. But she’s in all of it anyway.

Next year we’ll bring the chairs again. Some things you don’t need a reason to keep doing.