The Boiled Down Juice

I am curious, whose memory do you carry in your life? Whose life and attributes do you think about when you contemplate the folklorist, activist, cultural worker type person you want to be?

Let me explain why I am so curious about this.

Due to the illness and recent loss of my dear and wonderful mother, it’s been over two months since I have really posted any new writing to this blog. Since my mother’s death over a month ago I continue to spend a lot of time thinking about who she was and the legacy of perseverance, hope, courage and love she left for all of those who knew her. My mother was a woman who gave everything to what she believed in, namely that people are sacred and deserving of love and hope. I feel so honored I was able to care for her and spend the last few months of her life listening to and learning from her. As I try to figure out how to move forward, I wonder how I can incorporate her memory and spirit into my daily life.

You may be wondering why I am posting this personal information here on my ‘work’ related site. At first I thought it might not be appropriate to do so.
After all, most of our popular narratives about mixing ‘work’ and ‘personal life’ are cautionary tales outlining the dangers present and disasters that ensue when these two arenas overlap. Sure, there are some times when it’s best not to merge the two. But I think one of our most hopeful qualities as humans is that our lives continually intersect, and we influence each other in profound and mysterious ways. If we try and impose some kind of distinct boundary between the various sections of our lives, we may end up missing the whole point of what our work is all about. In the case of folklorists and others who work in cultural fields or activist work, a forced separation is especially detrimental because one of our major goals is to document, understand, and protect the very essence of our daily lives and expression. I know I am probably preaching to the choir here, but I say all these things because sometimes I have to remind myself of what I believe.

I know that everything I do from here on out, whether as a folklorist, family member, or friend will be influenced in some way by mother’s life and death. I know this is true for everyone else she was close to. She had such a presence.
She spent her entire life in Dardanelle, Arkansas; she loved this place. She was a dedicated member of the Dardanelle Church of Christ where she knew everyone by name and will always be known there for her generosity, spirit of thankfulness and her gentle spirit. She was considered a spiritual leader for the church. She took care of family cemeteries where distant and not-so distant relatives were buried; she bought an engraved Bible for every baby that was born; she knew everyone’s birthdays and always remembered to send a card. She took care of kids when people had to work late and needed a babysitter; she made food for the sick and grieving, and sat in hospitals with the ill and dying, comforting them and their families. When a family was grieving she would visit and offer to do things like take out the trash or clean the kitchen, knowing that sometimes it’s the smallest things that make the biggest difference. She prayed for and encouraged everyone. People are always telling me about the gift she had of a truly kind and gentle spirit. But perhaps what is even more amazing is that she was very humbly aware of her gifts and always used them to build others up and give back to her community.

Since her passing the whole community is in mourning. Three poems have been written about her by three different people (none of whom typically write poems), hundred of memorials made to Children’s Home, churches, and Hospice, and millions of beautiful stories told and shared. I feel so honored and humbled that this amazing woman was my mom.

Most days I still struggle to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other. Without her life seems bleak and lonely. Losing someone and then reincorporating that loss into our personal lives is something the grieving have to do. After all, it is one of the major ways that the dead live on in this realm and become our ancestors. To help with my grief, my good friend Tonya, like any Folk Studies grad student would do, recently picked me up a copy of Steve Zeitlin and Ilana Harlow’s Giving Voice to Sorrow: Personal Responses to Death and Mourning while at this year’s American Folklore Society meeting. Published in 2001, the book aims to explore “how we use storytelling, ritual, and commemorative art to cope with death and to celebrate life. It both documents and encourages outward expressions of inner struggles. I am greatly enjoying this book and will probably post more on it in the future. It’s strangely comforting to read about others’ need to give shape to human memory.

The book explores our outward expressions, or our folklore, as manifestations of those difficult grieving processes that take place in the wordless part of our brains. I can certainly relate. I know I feel a strong need to arrange silk flowers to place on my mom’s grave because in those flowers there is a whole narrative of loss and time spent together in the real garden. Even the color of the flowers holds a story about why my mother loves deep red and purples hues. These outward expressions help me get through the day, and they also help me mark time. Yet as I try to figure out how to re-enter my life as a folklorist, I want to be sure and always carry my mother’s spirit and memory with me in my work. One way I hope to do this is to work on cancer narrative research and see how folklore research can help in the realm of cancer patient advocacy (post about this to come in the near future).

But as I sit here and think about her and think about my work as a folklorist, I am curious about the countless less tangible ways we all honor our loved one’s memory, and our own sorrow, by allowing their lives to influence the way we live ours.

The word that comes to mind most when I think about the spirit of my mom is perseverance. As I watched her face the ups and downs of cancer, I saw that, for her, hope and perseverance were unquestioned partners in a well-lived life and a peaceful death. I think a lot about those words—hope and perseverance— and their applications, and sometimes it’s hard to see where the concept ends and my mother’s spirit begins. I turn the words over in my mind as I try to figure out the kind of person I want to be.

I imagine I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure out how to live out the daily shape of these words. But this got me to thinking—probably all of us carry someone else’s spirit with us in our work. We probably carry lots of spirits. As folklorists we are highly conscious of others’ narratives, but what about our own?

So, I am curious, whose memory do you carry in your life? Whose life and attributes do you think about when you contemplate the folklorist, activist, person you want to be?
I think it would be fun and healing to share this kind of stuff. If you feel like writing a post about a memory you carry, please either post a comment or send me the writing in an email and I’ll post it here. Even just a few sentences would be great. Thanks so much.

~Meredith Martin-Moats
November 23, 2008

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.