Give Thanks: The Gift of Memory

“Write this…as something to be remembered”

I’ve always been moved by the moments in Scripture when God tells people to write things down. Exodus 17:14 recalls when God told Moses in a moment of judgment, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered.” At the other end of the Bible, in Revelation 1:19, John was told of his vision, “Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.” God’s people are told time and again to be stewards of their history: “Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation” (Joel 1:3). A psalmist affirms to the LORD in Psalm 145:4, “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.”

In each case, the main point is this: By writing the truth down, life-giving information can be moved from short-term to long-term memory in the collective consciousness of a people. 

The Pain of Memory Loss

For the past few years, I’ve been reflecting more deeply than ever on the frustration and pain of memory loss. Oma struggled with dementia more and more until her passing a month ago, and she was the first loved one I’d ever been forced to accept had lost all real memory of me. On top of that, a number of friends over these same few years have confided in me their struggles with memory loss due to trauma, chronic illness, or drug use. 

And on top of that, I’ve been noticing myself forgetting things more often, too. I looked at a Geometry test this year and had a moment of panic at how much I’d forgotten. (Sure hope I don’t start needing that soon.) There are so many books and movies whose plots are gone for me, too. Stories I loved–How could I forget them? For now, these lost memories are rather trivial. However, their loss has moved me to reflect on which memories are not trivial. What is the life-giving information I’ve received that is worth preserving? 

Gift of Writing + Gift of Family

As I’ve reflected, I’ve reached a new level of gratitude to God for the gift of writing He’s given me. It’s something I love to do, but it’s also something I’ve just been wired to do: It’s how I process things most deeply and completely. Realizing that, I started to take all those commands in Scripture further to heart, and I told myself, “Write this as something to be remembered.” 

It is in this spirit that I’ve felt a prodding to write down my family’s stories–to commend God’s works in my family to future generations, that they might “walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6-7). My family has been a great gift to me, and now I’d like to commemorate some of their own gifts.

Oma and Opa’s Gifts 

In a post last month, I shared a bit of my Oma and Opa’s story in dedication to Oma’s memory. I shared my family’s appreciation for the knack Oma had for making everything feel special. She truly had a gift for making small moments into memories. Her gift was a huge part of our family: She served us with that gift, and she raised us all in love. I truly believe she honored and glorified God with that gift of hers, and I’m so thankful for and inspired by that. It moved me to ask my dad more questions, as I sought to put together a more complete picture of Oma and Opa, and of our family’s gifts. More of the story did come together. Here it is:

Revisiting that first post, one part of the story that stood out to me was the specific purpose for which Opa was originally sponsored and brought to the United States from the Netherlands. Dad had said Opa was brought “to oversee plant propagation.” Now, I wondered, “How did Ilgenfritz come to bring Opa over from across the world for plant propagation in the first place?” 

“He actually had a degree from a place in Alphen aan den Rijn,” Dad said. “Like the equivalent of an Associate’s degree in plant propagation. He was really good at it. Like, with Japanese maples. You always have to propagate them by grafting, but he could make them root by cuttings. He was really, really gifted at propagating stuff. It was fun, and I loved it. It was actually the thing I loved the most at the Nursery.” 

So, there you have it: Opa had a gift for plants! My appreciation for the extent of his gift grew as my grandmother, my parents, and I sat around a table playing Euchre the night after Oma’s service. Grandma was thanking Dad for a piece of advice he’d given her about a Japanese maple in her yard. When the tree wasn’t doing so well, she’d been advised by several people to chop it down close to the base. My father knew that would be excessive and advised her differently, and the tree had ended up bouncing back nicely based on that advice. 

I asked my dad then, “Is how to cut different trees one of the most common mistakes people make with their landscaping?” 

“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “You really have to know each different shrub and tree as you trim. Everything’s got something individually that you have to know.” 

“I think about that a lot with plants and animals,” I reflected. “I mean, I think about that with things that can’t communicate verbally to us. Humans have been gifted with the ability to speak and to have rational minds. So I think of stewardship. Like, we’re responsible as a race for using our brains to get to know the character and personality of animals and plants and things that can’t communicate. We aren’t supposed to blindly go, Whack! Whack! Whack! We’re capable of learning about them and caring about them, so if you choose not to learn about it and instead do what you want to, you’re being irresponsible…”

“Yeah,” my dad said, “That’s right.” Opa and my father were both gifted with wisdom concerning plants. I think of so many friends who struggle to keep houseplants alive (no shade! …and no pun intended), and it makes me so appreciative of Opa and Dad. God equipped both of them to be stewards of plant life, and they’ve both used that gift to be a blessing to others. 

At this point, I wondered, what about Oma? Dad and I had talked about Oma’s ability to make moments special. I also recalled her telling me that as a child in school, she’d sometimes be called upon to read aloud in class, because she had a “good” Dutch accent and also read well. But she’d moved here with Opa to pursue his dream and his gift. I wondered, did she have other gifts she wanted to use?

Dad recalled, “She thought being a nurse, and about being a teacher,” but neither of those ever came to fruition. 

“She took classes at the university,” Mom added. 

“That’s right,” Dad said, “She took classes at the University of Toledo. She wanted to get a degree in German.” 

“German?” I asked. “Really? Not French, huh. She wanted to study German so that she could teach German?” 

“I have no idea, honestly, it was just something she wanted to do. I think she’d gotten a bit bored, like it was an empty-nest type of thing, though I was still living at home with them at the time.” 

Oma loved languages, and she had a gift for reading (which she used even through her dying days), and she had an idea that she wanted to be a teacher. But what happened? “She had bursts of energy,” Dad said when describing her work ethic to me over the phone recently. “She’d get this idea to do something, and she’d want to go get it done. Whereas, Opa was more methodical, more slow-and-steady-wins-the-race.”

By nature, Dad and I both share more of Oma’s work ethic. Dad mentioned how he gets bursts of energy for his programming work, and I got a burst of energy to write this entire article today. This work ethic can be a very good, productive thing in an accommodating context, or when otherwise wielded intentionally. My heart went out to Oma as I reflected that maybe if her nature had been nurtured differently, she would have been able to achieve more.

This felt like a loose end to Oma’s story for me. Talking to my dad later, however, I finally found the closure that I’d been circling around. 

Oma did have an opportunity once to try out the teaching life. Mom recalled, “She signed up to be a substitute for me back when I taught at Hurd Road.” Reflecting on how it went, Mom said, “It wasn’t her gift.” I called my dad up and told him about how much gifts have been on my mind lately, and I listed off these moments when Oma’s gifts–or, more specifically in this case, lack of certain gifts–had come up in conversation with family that week: 

“Like, people were joking about how Oma was not a cook. And mom mentioned how Oma did not have the gift for substitute teaching. And Oma mentioned her handwriting always being worse than Opa’s. Did Oma just have a readiness to admit the gifts she didn’t have?” 

Dad replied, “My take-home message was a bit different. My mom always thought that she wished she had been a teacher. But after having the substitute teaching experience, she realized, ‘Ugh, no! I would never have liked that!’ I looked at that as a gift from God, like ‘No, I didn’t withhold that from you. You thought you would have liked it, but you wouldn’t have.’” Here, Dad was recalling God’s words to King David in 2 Samuel 12: “And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.” Oma was uniquely gifted, and God made sure that she was able to use the exact gifts she had in the exact ways she could make the best impact for the Kingdom. And that wasn’t through teaching, or God would have made her a teacher.

Instead, Oma was called to share the gift of her imagination, her contentment and her joy. Mom recalled, “Oma said, because they were too poor to go anywhere, [she and Opa] would put out a blanket and decide where they wanted to go, and they would lay out a blanket and have a picnic kind of thing, and they would just pretend that they were there.” 

“That sounds like Oma,” I said, and both Dad and Grandma agreed. “Sheer power of imagination and will. I can just imaginer her saying, Okay, we’re in Paris now, so I’m going to speak only French!” Mom laughed.

Dad added, “And it’s not that she didn’t have the ability to cook, for example. On Thanksgiving, she made the best Thanksgiving meals you could have asked for. When she applied herself to cooking, she was very good at it.” Other family recalled that she was very good at crocheting, knitting, and sewing, but she often chose not to follow patterns, and she often worked too quickly. She did many things simply out of necessity, but she didn’t have the patience for menial tasks. My dad and I both see a lot of ourselves in these descriptions of Oma (I note partially by way of confession). 

These reflections brought us back–as all things ultimately do–to the sovereignty of God. God made Oma and Opa and gave them gifts. In Opa’s intuition with plants and Oma’s imagination, they both stewarded their gifts in service of their family all their days. Retelling their story, we can see how God used them both mightily to make and bless a family that still continues to grow. 

With deep gratitude for the gifts God has given our family, I now ask that God would continue to use us mightily: May He make each of us aware of our gifts and move us to be good stewards of them. May He grant me the time, motivation, and inspiration to continue using my gift of writing for my family. Finally, in all our words and our deeds, may we declare the works of God to future generations, passing down the gift of memory. 

Up next: In December, I’ll be looking at pop culture from a Reformed worldview. I’ll be following along with my church’s advent series, Christmas at the Movies. First up is The Polar Express.