Forgotten Memories

Do You Smell That…

Seeing, hearing, and touching something might just trigger forgotten memories. Smell a fresh-baked pie, the fragrance of a single flower, the exhaust from a diesel tractor, or the roasting of green chilies. Almost without fail, you are immediately transported to a different time and a different place. Perhaps hundreds and even thousands of miles away. Perhaps years and even decades ago. Smell is our most powerful sense and is the one sense most strongly linked to our storehouse of memories.

There was one smell that never failed to transport me back in time. It was the damp, musty cellar beneath the house we lived in just prior to our move to New Mexico. As I opened that cellar door, as a prospective buyer and every time thereafter as a homeowner, the journey began. The moment that air reached my nose, the journey began. Every time, without exception, I thought of grandpa, my mother’s father.

He had worked on the railroad in his younger years but was forced into early retirement due to a work-related accident. As such, I only knew him as a retired old man with hardly a care in the world. Or so I thought. That is, of course, until later in his life. He fathered fourteen children during the time when pregnancy was the most effective means of birth control. One would be my mother, and eleven would be my aunts and uncles. One died during birth, and another died as a young child.

Memories, How They Linger

Often, I would take a trip to the cellar, and a long-forgotten memory would stop by for a visit. Like my brother and I, moving our bedroom to the basement. That was the year grandpa and grandma spent the winter at our house. I remember sitting on their front porch late in the evening, drinking Pepsi Cola from a sixteen-ounce glass bottle. A school break visit I remember like it was yesterday. Likewise, I remember the big grin on his face as he rode a homemade go-kart across our backyard.

Unfortunately, not all memories are as carefree, though admittedly, they are no less important. Watching grandpa pinch a roll of fat on his stomach and give himself an insulin shot each morning. Watching grandpa lose one leg and then the other, followed by his eyesight and his hearing. I remember seeing grandpa lose his dignity and then his pride. Diabetes and a not-so-savvy medical profession slowly ate away all that was good and wholesome. Grandpa slowly became a shell of the proud man he once was.

Then again, these too were the sixties. A time of innocence and a time not so innocent. A time for growing and a time for learning. From good lessons and from bad lessons. I will forever remember seeing him sit alone in a darkened room in his wheelchair. With tears in his eyes, begging to die. I will likewise forever remember the time he saw patrol cars along the roadway and an airplane flying overhead as we drove on I75. Dad explained “eye in the sky” as he drove down the highway. I remember Grandpa urging Dad to speed up so we could see if it all worked in practice as in theory.

Until Next Time, Grandpa

Grandpa died shortly after Judy and I married. I wish that we had had more time to spend together. Likewise, I wish that I had known him when I was older. I wish that I could have thanked him for all that I am because of all that he was.

Memories like these, both the good ones and the not-so-good ones, mold us into who we are. For better or worse, that’s the way it has always been, and that’s the way it will always be.

For a long time, the bad stuff made me angry, made me bitter. Now, for the most part, I embrace all that stuff with equal acceptance. I know I am who I am, flaws and all, because of these and many other lessons. Frozen in time, by these and countless other memories. Some lessons were learned in the blink of an eye, while other lessons have taken a lifetime. Gone but never forgotten memories.

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