Jan. 24th, 2025 08:50 am
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achariyaThe other day my cousin sent me a photo -- it was of two graves in a military cemetery, my aunt and uncle.
"Visited mom and dad today. Hard to believe it would have been their 60th wedding anniversary," she said.
When I say cousin, aunt, and uncle, the words are imprecise because they are translated from Thai. Thai conflates those relationships because of families living closer together. My mother and her father's brother's daughter grew up in the same house in Bangkok, and mom called her "sister."
My mom was the chaperone on my aunt's dates with this military guy from Georgia, and she remembers conspiring with him to help them get together. Mom spoke about it at my aunt's funeral reception, and I could tell that the memory of the time was fresh for her, the old man sitting and listening to the eulogy was young again.
I got the text from my (second-)cousin, and stared at the pink and purple and white flowers in vases near the gravestones. I know that they were both cremated. There is a picture of me somewhere holding the box of my aunt's ashes; also a picture of me speaking at my uncle's funeral, reading from Ecclesiastes. There is a time for everything, and a season for everything under the sun.
My cousin sent me the pictures because there are a shrinking number of people who will remember my uncle and aunt -- the people who care enough to see beyond the stones to the stories beneath.
I guess I thought about writing this down because of the impermanence of memory, and these waves of history and biography that will seem like a humorous footnote someday.
Here's hoping that history remembers and forgets all the right things.
"Visited mom and dad today. Hard to believe it would have been their 60th wedding anniversary," she said.
When I say cousin, aunt, and uncle, the words are imprecise because they are translated from Thai. Thai conflates those relationships because of families living closer together. My mother and her father's brother's daughter grew up in the same house in Bangkok, and mom called her "sister."
My mom was the chaperone on my aunt's dates with this military guy from Georgia, and she remembers conspiring with him to help them get together. Mom spoke about it at my aunt's funeral reception, and I could tell that the memory of the time was fresh for her, the old man sitting and listening to the eulogy was young again.
I got the text from my (second-)cousin, and stared at the pink and purple and white flowers in vases near the gravestones. I know that they were both cremated. There is a picture of me somewhere holding the box of my aunt's ashes; also a picture of me speaking at my uncle's funeral, reading from Ecclesiastes. There is a time for everything, and a season for everything under the sun.
My cousin sent me the pictures because there are a shrinking number of people who will remember my uncle and aunt -- the people who care enough to see beyond the stones to the stories beneath.
I guess I thought about writing this down because of the impermanence of memory, and these waves of history and biography that will seem like a humorous footnote someday.
Here's hoping that history remembers and forgets all the right things.
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this. I'm the last one. I struggle with what to do with all the stories, the history, even the *stuff*. <3
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