May/June 2003

"Just Forget Them"

by Bill Vossler

"O teach me how I might forget," lamented Romeo after slaying Tybalt. Or was it Macbeth after doing away with Duncan? Or was it well, I forget.

That happens to me more often nowadays: mental trains of thought clacking by in a blur (what were we just talking about?), or shunted momentarily onto sidetracks (where are my car keys?), or derailed permanently (what was my first girlfriend's name?).

No great surprise, of course, with the hurly-burly of daily life piling up the flotsam and jetsam along with the piling up of years. Experts say our burdened brains simply can't keep everything available for remembering or else the gray matter would seize up like an overheated automobile engine. The experts also say it is healthy to forget. Otherwise, the trickle, not to mention the raging rivers, of pain and disappointment and anger endemic to living would become an ocean in which many of us might drown. But some things I cannot forget, no matter how I strive. Like the memories of those sad and gentle brown eyes that my mother bade me put aside many years ago.

But my dreams are suffused with memories of their sad faces. Tell me, how do I undream or teach my memory to forget its dreams? Lord knows, there is much to forget -- like the time I sneezed a mouthful of milk all over my newly met dream woman. I can still hear the roar of 200 delighted witnesses in the college commons. I wish I could forget that.

And teach me how I might forget those brown eyes. That fall day in North Dakota, my younger brother and I were halted by a mournful cry. At age seven and age five, we were old enough to fetch jars of fresh milk from our cousins' cows every day.

Mom had warned us to avoid one particular house on our route, the one with the black porch railing near the water tower. Obediently, we always skirted past it on the far side of the street.

They jingled shiny coins and held them out to us, and seemed so sad that we forgot Mom's warning and rushed across the street and up onto their small porch. The woman disappeared inside and reappeared with a plate heaped with fresh-baked cookies. Soon we were sitting on their laps, clutching coins in one small hand, stuffing cookies into our mouths with the other, while the man and woman stared at us with their sad brown eyes and desperately clasped their arms around our midriffs.

While holding me, the man heaved back and forth in his rocking chair, creaking the porch boards, while he laughed and ruffled my hair. Then the woman crushed me to her warm, ample bosom. She grimaced and moaned, kissing me wetly as she sobbed softly, crooning, "Boova, boova, mina gloyna boova." Boys, boys, my little boys.

Finally, bored and cookie-sated, we wrestled loose. The old woman glanced wildly around, then thrust the cookie plate at us. Two cookies skidded off and shattered into myriad pieces. When I shook my head, the woman grabbed her husband's arm and said shrilly, "Gelt, gelt, schnell, schnell!" Money, money, quick, quick! But we clomped down the steps and ran onto the street. I glanced back. The woman leaned heavily against the porch post, her shoulders jerking, shiny trails glistening down her creased cheeks. The man sat stone-still in his rocking chair, staring straight ahead.

At home, I showed mom the booty and recounted our adventure. She shrieked, snatched the money from my hand, and raced into the bathroom. The coins clattered into the toilet bowl amidst flushing water.

Grim and red-faced, she shook her finger at me. "I said stay away from them! Forget about them!"

Not long after, they moved away; marravarich (stinkweed) grew rampant in their yard. The door canted on one hinge. The porch floor rotted through. We no longer went for milk, and, over the years, the sheer weight of other memories silted this one under.

Like a dinosaur bone, the incident was deeply buried, but not gone -- until 30 years later, when I was home on a visit, alone with my mother. I was glancing out the kitchen window, fondly remembering days playing baseball, digging up Indian artifacts, building snow forts; and then my eyes fixed on the water tower. The incident with the old couple rushed back with staggering intensity. I saw the old woman's shaking shoulders, the man staring blankly, Mom's grim face. Why was I supposed to forget about them? And who were they?

"Oh, you know. The ones I got the money from? The old couple you told me to forget about?" Her face went white. "What do you mean, 'old couple?'"

"Well, maybe they were only in their late 50s or early 60s."

Gruffly, she said, "You don't know?" The silence stretched on.

I stared out the window. The clock ticked loudly. Finally, I figured, that was that. But I heard her sniffle. When I turned around, tears glistened in her eyes, streaking down her cheeks. In a hoarse whisper she said, "Don't tell me you really don't know."

"I don't," I said. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have asked," I added irritably. But truth had already begun to lay a cold finger on my shoulder. For moments she kept her eyes closed, lips trembling. Finally, she choked out, "They werethat was Jacob and Christina Vossler." I looked at her blankly. She said, "Your father'smother and father. Yourgrandparents."

"My grandparents," I whispered.

Slowly I sank into a chair, head swirling, heart thudding.

"You never knew they were your grandparents?" Mom rasped.

I stormed from the house and sped to the lot where their house had stood. I parted the waist-high weeds, and there where they had once held me in their arms, I sank to the cold ground and cried. I cried for the love and the lives that had been forfeited from me. Like the Montagues and the Capulets, our families had warred since before my birth. My father had abandoned us when I was four, and I had never gotten to know his side of the family. In fact, I had been pressed to forget them.

And I had. It seems preposterous now, but for 30 years I had forgotten all about my relatives. The Vosslers, ashamed of my dad, had never contacted me. And I, fearful of upsetting my family's equilibrium, had never contacted them.

Nothing can remedy the loss of my grandparents in my life. They have disappeared irretrievably. And how can I forget that? How can I forget that my stepfather, as I later discovered, drove that gentle old couple away from our house time after time as they walked up in their Sunday-best to exercise their grandparental rights? How can I forget the complicity of my mother? For years, the bitterness of those betrayals burned inside me, as I tried, as Henry King wrote, to "learn the hateful art, how to forget." My mother and stepfather were not cruel people, I kept telling myself; they did the best they could. But in light of the preventable loss of my grandparents, my mother's and stepfather's best had not been good enough.

One morning years later, after a fight with my wife, as I lay in her arms, I realized I could not remember what our fight had been about. How had I forgotten? After Nikki reminded me of what we were arguing about, I realized: Forgetting is only the final step, dependent first on forgiving -- forgiving ourselves for our part in the fray and others for theirs. Forgive and forget. It is not coincidence that forgive is first, followed by forget. One frees us to do the other.

And so, with time and hard work, I eventually forgave them all -- my stepfather, my mother and, especially, myself. I dimmed, extinguished and then forgot the fire of anger. Once a year, I make the long trip back to the graveyard where my grandparents are buried. I kneel beside their headstones and sometimes sing softly, sometimes speak a few words to each of them as I lay a bouquet of flowers on the graves of Jacob and Christina Vossler. One bouquet for each -- forget-me-nots. 

Minnesota resident Bill Vossler is the author of several books and more than 2,200 magazine articles.

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