Trick or Treat

I was feeling a bit detached, sitting the balcony of St. Mark‘s Lutheran Church during Friday's funeral. I knew the family well enough to attend but didn‘t feel obligated to sit on the main floor. I was also feeling kind of analytical as I listened to the eldest son give details of his dad’s birth. Doctors had to choose between saving grandmother or dad, not both. They choose grandma, but lo, infant daddy to be cries out! He lives! And now volumes of details about dad’s life, now ended, pour forth. Not typical funeral fare. Later the same son, sitting with mom in the second pew, abruptly gets up and takes a picture of the choir singing “The King of Love my Shepherd is.” Not satisfied with the view, he proceeds out the side door and takes a second shot from the chancel doorway. And while he‘s there, why not a get a few shots of the audience? He’s gone digital, but the camera still needs to flash, and flash and flash. A stickler for proper decorum, I can feel our pastor cringe.

I‘ve just finished reading Lauren Slater’s Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. One of these experiments, called “Lost in the Mall”, explores implanting false memories. False memories can be implanted, vividly recalled and used convict the innocent of high crimes.

The eldest son vividly relating the story of his father’s birth? Has to be an implanted memory, first in dad and later in his children. As other funeral family members speak, I wonder about other memory modifications I’m also hearing.

My Halloween memories are good ones. The parents didn’t know to what extent we had developed treat gathering in those last years. We harvested neighborhoods and filled wash tubs. Well, anyway, that’s how I remember it

So for me remembering itself has become a Halloween treat. I'm hoping your Halloweens were good ones. Have any memories you’d like to share? Put them in the comments space.