You bring them back to life

...by writing about them.  Just listened to an interview on CBC with author and Pulitzer Prize nominee Francine du Plessix Gray about one of her books entitled "Them:  a memoir of parents".

It hit home.  When I write about my mother and father and when I honour their festal traditions...when I get out the crystal and the silver and the fine china and the linen napkins and when I give a dinner or a lunch or a tea, I bring them back to life.  That's what we do when we emulate or write about our parents. 

As I was polishing the silver and shining the crystal in preparation for B's birthday lunch, all I could think about was my mother.  I understand her so much better, now that she is gone.  All the condiments had to be set out in little dishes, accompanied by decorative silver spoons.  The main course had to be laid out on a beautiful platter with a silver serving fork.  The dessert had to be served in a crystal bowl with a silver spoon..........you name it, everything was done a certain way. 

The rolls were always buttered, heated and placed in linen before being served; no butter-your-own-french-bread show for Lillian Griffith.  In fact, I don't remember her ever serving french bread because it was too "french".  She was Canadian English gentry to the core.  All the beautiful things I inherited from her are a testament to that fact. 

But there was a source of irritation in the Lord clan and it revolved around my grandmother's half-brother, George.  My great-grandmother died young and left four children, one of whom was my grandmother, Lillian Lord.  Her father, a well-to-do furniture maker and undertaker in Brockville, re-married and guess what?  He had a second family and guess who changed the will and got all the money?  I remember the whispers when Grandma's half-brother "George" visited from Toronto.  My grandmother, mother and aunts would be upset because they knew they had to be "nice and polite" to George, but couldn't really warm up to it. 

Nevertheless, the gentrified upbringing of my matriarchal clan never failed to dutifully kick in, resulting in lovely cocktail and dinner parties for George and his wife.  Predictably, this failed to prompt George, a millionaire, to loosen the purse strings and share his windfall with his father's first family, but my grandmother and aunts didn't let him see the whites of their eyes.   

Never let the side down.