Echoes of the Past

I heard my mother walking down the hall from the kitchen to our bedroom last week, or was it my grandmother? 

Both have been gone for years now but they live on in me. I distinctly heard my own footsteps moving in the same gait pattern that my mother developed as she got older and it gave me a start! My dad died in September 2019 and I was able to go to Mexico and help with his care in his last week of life. I hadn't been there for a couple of years and some of the people who lived nearby looked at me as if they were seeing a ghost. Apparently I am also looking more like Mom as I get older, even though family have always said I favoured Dad's side of the family. 

Our grandfather, the year he died, with three grandsons

I was laughing about this as I talked to one of my brothers last week. As he ages, his looks and personality remind people of our grandfather, a grandfather he doesn't remember at all. Simeon died of a heart attack a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday on November 25, 1966. Mark was three years old and I was eleven. Simeon was born in Amsterdam and came to Toronto as a young adult. I didn't know him well as we had lived in South Africa for several years after I was born. But impressions of him were present in my subconscious mind.

A while back, a co-worker asked me to go with her to a Dutch grocer during lunch hour at Christmas time. It was a small shop I had never visited before but it was familiar in a strange way. The gingerbread houses, black licorice, pickled herrings, smoked gouda and limburger cheese and the cheese knife brought back childhood memories of my grandfather that I had forgotten. I understood why my own father liked herring and stinky cheeses. 

7 of these people, 3 generations, are part of me! (circa 1954)

My grandmother, Dad's mother, was a lovely, artistically gifted lady. She struggled with anxiety in later years and I saw these personality traits mirrored in Dad as he declined physically and mentally. It is easy to develop a negative and cynical attitude as we age, even as younger adults. It takes courage to accept the inevitable loss of independence with grace and good humour. 

These are things I think about in relation to my influence on our daughters, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, as I live in them too. We cannot change our genetic make up but we can work on our attitudes and habits, maintaining interests outside ourselves, positivity for the future, acceptance of change, and unconditional love.