I remember everything

By Bobby Neal Winters

My mother had been in a nursing home for a while before she passed away.  She had been suffering from dementia for a long time before not even my brother’s efforts to take care of her, himself, and a full-time job were not enough, and we had to put her in care.

She got to a point where she didn’t remember me.  Being a 5-hour drive away I couldn’t be around enough to keep the image of me alive in her mind.  When I last saw her the week before she died, she waved me away from her like I was an intruder.

I remember that as vividly as it was the other day and it was more than 13 years ago.

And even that memory is precious to me.

We get something from the act of remembering.  Undoubtedly, there is a brain scientist somewhere who’s studied the brain and discovered that we get some sort of chemical reward for the act of remembering.  If not, some of them should start looking because it is there.  Some of us might have more of it than others.

We like to remember things even when they make us sad.  In fact sometimes the reward is stronger when we remember sad things.

Those of you who follow this space know that I spend quite a bit of time out in my woodshop listening to music as I work.  A lot of that music is music from the 70s or 80s or it’s country music.

The music from the 70s and 80s is from when I was in high school and college and is wrapped around and tangled up in a lot of memories. I can listen to it and scenes from my salad days are brought before my mind’s eye.

The country music is more subtle.  While I did listen to a lot of country music during those days, I find even more recent country music is able to help me connect with memories.

The reason for that is straight-forward: Down deep in my bones and on a very, very basic level, I am a hick. I’ve shelled peas as the sun rose on a summer morning. I’ve walked barefoot through clover and stepped on bees.  I’ve turned over cow patties to get rolly-pollies so that I could fish for perch.  I’ve peed on mud so that I could make mudpies. (I was three, but yep, I am hick.)

The best of the country artists can tap into imagery that helps me connect with those memories.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to a song by Luke Combs called “Where the Wild Things Are,” and there in my memory were my dad and my Uncle Neal.  I would characterize “Where the Wild Things Are” as a retelling of the story of the Prodigal Son where certain things are swapped around.  The Prodigal leaves home. Instead of the Prodigal returning to a home with a resentful brother, the Brother goes to visit him “out where the wild things are.”  The Prodigal then is killed and the family goes to him and buries him.

In this, the Prodigal would be my Uncle Neal.  He was the one in the family whose spirit couldn’t be contained in the state of Oklahoma, so he moved to Colorado, out where the wild things are.  His energetically lived life was cut shorter than any of us would’ve liked it to be. 

Not exactly like the song, but to evoke memory, it doesn’t have to be.

Memories like these always come at family funerals, but while the memories are so bittersweet, a funeral is a high price to pay.  Zach Bryan’s new song “Pink Skies” does a wonderful job of evoking the memories of family funerals and consequently the memories of the departed.

Remembering our lost loved-ones is so sweet it is even worth the price of tears.

While we are talking about Oologah, Oklahoma’s Zach Bryan, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention his song--shared with Kacey Musgraves--”I Remember Everything.”

He captures in that song in a very few words what I am taking an essay to explain. (That is the power of poetry.) Memory is painful but we must remember.

I will now toss out a reference to a song by Lainey Wilson, “Wildflowers, Wild Horses.”

It is short and one might dismiss it as simply being a catchy hook padded out with enough other words to justify a song, but in those few words she manages to remind me of a type of woman that is unique to the West--in which I include the Great Plains. Those who knew my Uncle Neal would be familiar with that type of woman because they constituted a number of his wives. For my part, I grew up with a few, and the song brings up memories, but more from observation than experience.

As we get older and lose more people, we make the discovery that life is sweet. Life is a gift. Memory is a way we can squeeze more out of life. Even bitterness is a taste.  If you couldn’t taste any more, I think you’d even miss that.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.