Ah, The Memories

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a funeral for the wife of my cousin, Doug Holmstrom. While generally unpleasant, funerals do sometimes become family reunions, of sorts, and I got to visit with Doug’s brother, Darwin Holmstrom, who I haven’t seen for about 25+ years.

I was much closer to Doug than to Darwin. Darwin ran with a different crowd than I did, and he always seemed ‘darker’ and more aloof than Doug. I was not attracted to that.

Anyway, it was very nice to catch up and view a person’s life experience through the eyes of an adult. We talked about our lives and experiences. It was really nice. His wife is really interesting. I wish I could have spent more time speaking with them.

Darwin’s grandmother, Elsie, (she is my aunt) is in the Karlstad nursing home, as is my father, so we talked about that. We also talked about how interesting elderly people really are, and how memories from long ago are so much clearer to Elsie and my dad than are current memories. My dad spends a lot of time talking about what happened to him when he was young, and the stories are varied and vidid.

I asked Darwin if our memories of younger years are clearer to us as we age, what are we going to be remembering and talking about when we are old? Based on the look that he gave me, I think I horrified him.

Hopefully we won’t be terrorizing our caretakers. Kind of a scary thought, huh!