Frozen in Time: Remembering Loved Ones Beyond the Grave

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Game plan

Margaret reflects on the common human tendency to imagine how deceased loved ones would respond to current events. Through poignant examples, such as wishing a parent could witness significant life milestones or expressing relief that they are not around to witness troubling times, Margaret explores the emotional complexities associated with these thoughts. These reflections are not merely nostalgic but reveal a deeper understanding of how our memories can create a static image of our loved ones, frozen in time at the moment of their passing.

Margaret emphasizes that as time passes, our perceptions of our deceased loved ones may become less accurate. The memories we hold onto are often based on the person as they were in the past, which can color our expectations about how they might react to contemporary events. This realization underscores the importance of acknowledging the fluidity of human experience and personal growth. Just as we evolve over time, so too might our loved ones have changed if they were still present, influenced by their own unique experiences and the shifting dynamics of the world around them.

Ultimately, Margaret advocates for a balanced approach to remembering loved ones. While it is natural to want to include them in our lives and honor their memory, it is equally crucial to recognize the limitations of our imaginative projections. By doing so, we can celebrate their influence on our lives without imposing an unrealistic narrative on their character. This nuanced reflection invites you to engage with your memories in a way that honors the spirit of their loved ones while allowing for the complexity of human experience and change.

At one time or another, most of us have looked at an event and said, oh, I wish mom was here for this. Or, mom would have loved to see you get married. Or even maybe something as simple as, it's too bad mom didn't see her roses bloom this year, period. Or it could also be something like, I'm really glad dad isn't here to see what has happened in his city. Or, ooh, dad would be very upset at these turn of events. Right. So it's normal for us to look back and think about what our deceased loved ones would have thought about a situation, whether we perceive that situation to be positive or negative.

But there's something I want us all to consider.

We are looking back at an image that is frozen in time. And the farther away or the more distance we have between when they died and the event we're discussing, the more likely it is that we might not be accurate, because we have this image of our loved one as they were before they died. Now time has passed, and again, we're looking at an image that's frozen in time. I'm looking at my father as he was in 2012, my mother as she was in 2014. Well, now it's years later. And I'm not suggesting that they would have transformed into completely different people and that their values would have changed dramatically.

But what I'm suggesting is I can't predict how those missing years, if we can call them that, how or in what way would those missing years have impacted them? Take a moment and stop and look at yourself and how much you have changed since the day of your loved one's death. And especially if it's been years. I mean, so, you know, I can look at these events that have happened since 2012 and 2014, and so many things have changed in the world. My goodness, we've lived through a pandemic, and that's changed our cultural way of being.

And yes, during the pandemic, absolutely. I'd have moments where I'd think, like, oh, my gosh, mom would have hated this. She was extroverted. She would have hated being on lockdown. She loved to go places together. They loved to take road trips, mom and dad. And there's part of me that would think, well, I wonder if they would have followed lockdown or would have they rebelled and just said, who cares? We're going to go out anyway. And the truth is, I don't know, right? And I can't know because they had already been dead for several years.

So when we weigh in on behalf of our deceased loved ones, when we say things like he would have loved this or she would have hated that, or I'm so glad he didn't live to see this, what we're really expressing is our memory of a person at a certain time in life, and again, a frozen in time person, because we don't know if they were still alive, what experiences they would have had and how those experiences would have changed them. And I'm not suggesting that it's wrong to have that discussion either out loud or in your head about how somebody would have reacted to something, because this is your way of keeping that person that you knew and their memory alive.

And it's your way of even maybe when you talk about it with other people, friends and family, maybe it's your way of kind of bringing them along in your life. They're gone, but you want to bring them along. And if we can bring them along without too much clinging and attachment, then that can be a beautiful thing. But to think that we definitively know what someone who died years ago would think or do or say in a certain moment is unfair. And it's constructing a kind of fabrication that isn't true.

It might not even be valid. And so we want to be very careful about how we include our deceased loved ones in current events because we want to do it in a way that we are respecting and honoring their memory and acknowledging that they were an important part of our lives without creating this false Persona.