Mementos of the Past

The first time I remember confronting death was as a child.  My mother took me to visit my paternal grandmother and grandfather in a Los Angeles suburb.  It was the kind of place that the original boom California generation moved to as a relief for what central Los Angeles had become. I was twelve years old and my memories of my grandfather were limited as we had moved north to Alaska when I was two years old.  I had only seen him a couple of times since then and those memories were clouded in the fog of early youth.  Memories colored by photographs that likely don’t recall but simply recreate a memory that had left the mind or been buried within its deep recesses.   

My grandfather was debilitated.  He sat in his naugahyde recliner with a blanket wrapped around him watching reruns of Bonanza and Big Valley.  He was suffering from brain cancer and his time was limited but when you are young, and have no concept of death, time seems to have little finality.  For a young mind, Grandpa is just not the same.  He is sick but the outcome of dying is difficult for a young mind to grasp.  I remember watching as my mother and grandmother washed him.  His skin was like tissue paper, discolored bruised and frail.  I had never seen anything like it in my life and his condition was in stark contrast to a framed photo that sat on a nearby table.  In the black and white photo he stood proudly with his  puffy riding hat next to a Harley Davidson motorcycle that he had ridden with my grandmother from Buffalo New York to California.  In retrospect I wonder how my father Edward traveled out to California with them.  Still the image of him riding across America with my grandmother’s red hair flapping in the wind is the one I prefer to preserve in my mind.  It was an image of young wild and free far different than the elderly couple I knew as a young boy.  

Edward Patrick Raymer

My grandfather was 66 when he died.  My mother was 59.  I am 51.  When you list ages it is hard not to feel a chill down your own spine as you know you are walking through life in their shadows.  With each passing day I take another step down the same linear progression they did yet hope in my heart that the years will guide me further than the sad realities that they suffered.  Each had their vices and lived in a world not as health conscious as today.  The world of the daily cocktail and the endless cigarettes.  When exposure to chemicals was a typical part of industrial work life with little thought about how they might be impacting the brain.  

My Grandfather’s arms were covered in tattoos he had received in the Navy.  Concentrated years of his life as he worked as a fireman on a landing craft in the Philippines.  I sat near him when he was sick and remember how he admired my cap.  He gave me mementos of his past.   A Bluejacket's Manual that was his guide as a seaman.  A certificate he was given when he crossed the equator for the first time.  A small plastic box containing pins from the VFW and other memories.  They are worth nothing but they are representative pieces of him during small moments of time.  Small treasures tucked away and forgotten.  

As a civil servant in the US government we are given small pins every five years for our service.  Inconsequential little pieces of metal that seem almost degrading in their insignificance when compared with the years of life traded for them.  For awhile, they had a microscopic diamond however, that has been cut a likely victim of declining budgets.  These pins like my grandfathers are tucked away in a box, mostly forgotten. 

Perhaps as life closes and anything of value is sold away it will be the little treasures that will remain much like those of my grandfather.  They will be handed down as trinkets of the past representing the life of a departed and symbolic memory of the past.  

My first brush with death only became real as the years past and I realized the finality of it all.  It is only as the names begin to collect that reality really begins to sink in.  Life is temporal, existence is finite.  Live and love for each day you have for to sacrifice that is to sacrifice a piece of your soul.   Today I keep a small book that lists the names of those that are gone yet left a lasting mark on my life.  From time to time I look back and read their names.   They made me or at least contributed to who I am and I hope in my heart that some day another will remember me with the same respect, love and admiration I do all of them.

Grandpa Edward Patrick Raymer, Grandma Gertrude Neuman Raymer, Marcella Mae Goodloe (Sally), Grandpa Fred Bauer, Grandma Eleanor Bauer, Grandma Bettie Lees, Grandpa Laurence “Larry” Lees, Ed Raymer, Ken Piper, Robert “Bob” Douglas, Robert “Bob” Tamburelli, Max Morley, Efren Abanco, Kathryn Louse Baker Ostrosky, Mai Wa Smallwood, Irene Pan