Holy remembrance

The rain finally stopped and dad and I sat on the deck. The sky had cleared to a deep blue , the birds trilled and a warm breeze surrounded us, tinkling the wind chimes.
A box of photos sat at my feet. Dozens of dusty black-and-white and color snapshots, corners and edges aged and yellowed with time.

My brother had carted the box out of the garage. We will display some of them at dad’s party when we celebrate his 90th birthday on May 6th. His birthday is really Cinco de Mayo — true Mexican-American that he is — but with so many family flying in, we are honoring him on May 6th.
As I browsed through the photographs, a surge of nostalgia swelled up in my heart. There we all were — family — in our youth. Mom and dad, looking like movie stars, dressed in sequined gown and tux ready to go to a party at KYW-TV where dad once worked.
And me and my siblings, at backyard barbecues, sitting at the long wooden picnic table, chomping into a burger and holding up a brew or a soda, hamming it up for the camera. My nieces and nephews, still toddlers, playing tag on the green grass, or rolling around in it, their lives still ahead of them.
I began to show the photos to dad. He has limited speech capacity since the stroke, but he squinted and smiled and kept saying “wow” and “joven” which means young. Yes. We were young.
As I looked at the photos in the box, each one evoked a memory. Of our family. Our lives. Each had captured a moment in time. I came to see this remembrance as holy — and at the heart of all spiritual practice.
This week, as I write this, we are in the midst of many sacred memories. For Christians, it is Holy Week and in the Jewish faith, Passover.
Jesus said he yearned to share the Passover with his disciples. His desire was to create eternal memories of the heart, that he might live on in us when he shared bread and wine and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
For those celebrating the Passover, a seder meal commemorates the freedom of the Isaraelites from slavery and into a promised land. In fact, the Jewish people were commanded to remember.
Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Remember that the Lord took you out of the bondage of slavery. “Remember” is a biblical mandate and the Passover story that initiated a commitment to memory.
This time of year is one for remembering the Divine’s intervention into a troubled world, freedom from enslavement, triumph of life over death.
Why is it important to remember? Many reasons. Perhaps most important, memories give us identity, show us who we are as individuals and within the larger community. They ensure that life events will not be lost, but learned from, treasured and carried forward. They bind us together. In love. In life. In death.
So as I sit with dad, pouring over photographs, I am on a journey of remembering. Trips to Nashville and the hills of Red Boiling Springs, TN; birthdays and my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary; my grandmother’s funeral, Christmases, trips to Ireland and vacations in Florida.
Dad and I smile at the people we once were — slimmer, sillier, unwise, hopeful, blissful in our ignorance of what was to come. And I marvel at the people we have become — strong, stretched, suffering with stroke or illness, resilient, prayerful, loving.
I see myself in some of these photos and I’d like to go back to that young woman who was me. Tell her about life. That parts of it will be happy, some of it will be painful, but to hold on to the moment. To savor it, no matter how it may feel, because it will never come again. This is what I would tell her.
Dad tires of looking through the photos. I put them away and we go back inside the house. He is moving slower these days with his walker. But on May 5th we will celebrate the memories of 90 years of a life well lived and well loved. We will look at the photos and “ooh” and “aah” and call to mind the stories they evoke.
And we will be blessed in those sacred memories.
We will be glad and rejoice in the now.