Sub-optimal remembrance

We've all forgotten things; sometimes we get away with forgetfulness lightly, small things like forgetting where the car keys or our sunglasses are for a time isn't life-changing. Other times it can cause catastrophic issues with far-reaching ramifications. But what about when we forget people.

I forgot someone's birthday back in November...remembered it on the wrong day is more accurate I suppose, and I felt bad about it; I explained at the time that birthdays aren't really my thing so I'm not focused on them, however that doesn't mean they're not important to others so I should have remembered.

In the next day or so it's my mother's birthday, she would have been seventy nine but died at fifty nine after suffering with cancer for a few years. It was tragic really, her demise, and quite terrible. Unfortunately those images are burned into my brain and are impossible not to see but I try to remember her as she was throughout my life and on her birthday is one of those occasions where I do so. I usually break out a heap of photos going back to her youth (and my own) which helps me feel connected to her and to remember her in life and not just at the terrible end. I do the same for my father who also passed away after a cancer and dementia battle.

It would be sometimes be good if we could have a selectively sub-optimal remembrance; choosing what we remember may save us a lot of heartache I guess, through blocking out that which makes us unhappy or brings unpleasant thoughts, but we cannot...we have to deal with all of our memories, the good and the bad and as a human life is made up of each element it would be limiting to block one out. I guess that's why I go through my photo ritual on the birthday's of my mother and father, and others I've lost over the years, sort of like a memory top-up which helps hold the less-pleasant memories down rather than trying to eliminate them.

Dealing with the loss of loved ones through death can be difficult and certainly unique to each of us but we all have the ability to remember them in life rather than just at their end and it's what we remember that counts when a person has departed. How do you remember people you've lost to death, what do you do on their birthday's and deathdays to remember them, if anything? Feel free to share, but only if you want to.