Those of you who regularly read my column know that I am somewhat of a word wonk. I get excited as a kid being told that the family is going to Disneyland when I Google The Online Etymology Dictionary, etymoline.com, and discover some new tidbit about the derivation, origin, or root meaning of a word. I can hear many of you chuckle and say, "Dr. Lynn, you really are a Geek!" I have to admit, you are right. But this fine May day I ask you to indulge me, just a little.

I just had the pleasure of making fifteen bereavement calls. These are the regular calls our bereavement department makes to the family members and loved ones of Hospice of the Valleys patients we have served. We provide this as a part of our 13 month follow up and extension of caring for our HOV families. Often when calling these long lists, we get phone answering machines, and leave a caring message and contact information so that people will know our bereavement department is there for them if they are experiencing a need for support. But today every call yielded a wonderful conversation, filled with sharing and deep memories. "Remember" became the word of the day.

Each person responded to a caring call with combinations of emotions, laughter, reports of just where they were when they were answering the phone, and waves and waves of memories. Memories which came unsolicited, freely, joyously, just raring to be shared and the missed person brought quickly back to life. They came as effortlessly and as alive as if I'd been invited to meet their loved one right now, in this moment, with them.

My "go to" etymology word companion had this gem to share about the word remember: and it was a historical tidbit, from the Century Dictionary of 1895. It said:

"Remember implies that a thing exists in the memory, not that it is actually present in the thoughts at the moment, but that it recurs without effort. Recollected means that a fact, forgotten or partially lost to memory, is after some effort recalled and present to the mid. Remembrance is the store-house, recollection the act of culling out this article and that from the repository..."

In my precious calls with families today, there were no efforts to recollect, but just an outpouring of things existing in their memories, in their "store house" of snapshots of a vibrant life. I had conversations with an elderly woman tucked in her bed, and a bargain shopper in the aisles at Walmart; a gentleman remembering his Dad with his dog's head in his lap, and a woman in the salon getting her hair done in a style she hadn't had in years. All wanted to keep talking anyway. Why? Because they wanted to unleash the love stored so perfectly as a memory. They wanted to remember.

I heard tales of a daughter who likes to remember even though those memories bring her to tears, and a son who had just watched roses blooming on a the bushes they had planted in memory of their mother and their father. I was treated to the story of a selfless father who made sure his daughter understood that God would never abandon her, and a son whose wistful memories were particularly poignant now (at the start of a baseball season) bringing him back to the hours of love shared watching the games with his Dad. The images were joyous, colorful, and clear as a bell. This is the work of the legacy each of us is entrusted with, in love, when a dear one passes: they live, through us, by the spontaneous outpouring of our shared memories.

It reminded me once again how the work of Hospice of the Valleys' bereavement care is to simply, with a listening ear and a loving word, assist the bereaved to remember, and to touch that remembrance, that proves that their love, indeed, never dies.