Who We Honor is More About Shaping the Future
People memorialize their dead in many different ways. More often than not they etch the names on stones along with a few, selected descriptive traits. I have read, “Loving father, husband, brother and grandfather.” Rarely do I see the individual’s profession listed. “Adoring mother, wife, sister, grandmother and great grandmother.” These memorials are not testimonies to how people saw themselves or even how they defined their lives. Instead they are about how the mourners wish to remember them.
It matters little in fact if the world at large saw them as adoring or loving. It matters little as well if they were on occasion not even so loving and adoring to their own family. These stones are about memory. They are not about history. They are about how we honor our dead. They are about how we fashion the remembrances that help us to tell the stories about what was best in those we love. They are not about telling a child who is named for a beloved grandfather about the occasional struggles with anger her namesake once contended with.
Honoring the memory of a grandfather is not about remembering history. It is much more about the future than the past....
It matters little in fact if the world at large saw them as adoring or loving. It matters little as well if they were on occasion not even so loving and adoring to their own family. These stones are about memory. They are not about history. They are about how we honor our dead. They are about how we fashion the remembrances that help us to tell the stories about what was best in those we love. They are not about telling a child who is named for a beloved grandfather about the occasional struggles with anger her namesake once contended with.
Honoring the memory of a grandfather is not about remembering history. It is much more about the future than the past....