The Memory Keepers

There are women who preserve whole generations

inside old drawers and faded boxes.

Not because anyone asked it of them,

but because long memories

and longer years of loving

have entrusted them with the task.

They remember which recipe

needed a little more cinnamon.

Which photograph was taken

just before Grandpa died.

Which prayer card belonged to a mother

who always wore an apron

and smelled like fresh air.

In city apartments and country homes

they are the guardians of the small sacred things.

A baptism candle wrapped in yellowed tissue paper.

A letter written long ago with pen and ink.

The scent of an old Bible kept in a cedar chest.

Names no one says anymore.

Memory is more than remembering.

It is love refusing to disappear.

It is the soul gathering fragile fragments

and preserving them thru the passing of years.

A way of saying

this person mattered.

This memory is a priceless inheritance

that must not be lost.

Sometimes, late in the evening,

these women wonder what will happen

when they are no longer here

to tell the stories? 

Who will remember

how Grandma always lit a candle before Mass began,

and always sat in the same pew?

Who will explain

that the chipped blue bowl mattered

because it once sat on a table

where grace, food and family where shared daily?

Not all vocations are seen from altars.

Some are lived beside kitchen sinks,

at family gatherings,

or alone in the stillness of an attic,

carefully holding onto yesterday

so its treasures and lessons will not vanish.

The Evangelists understood this.

They gathered stories,

holding close the voices of those who recalled

what Jesus did and said.

They wrote things down

so His love and mercy would live beyond a generation.

They understood what these women understand.

That memory is its own form of mercy.

That love preservers what the world is too hurried to keep.

“I too have decided,” Luke wrote

“to preserve these things carefully.

To write an orderly account for you,

so that you may know the certainty

of the things you have been taught.”

I like to think that heaven itself

is something like this:

Nothing lost.

Nothing forgotten.

Every name, family ritual,

and chipped blue bowl

remembered and treasured.