Memories Hold
Table Talk
Setting the Table
You are welcome here. Come just as you are, bringing whatever is on your heart today. Take a few moments and allow yourself to just be. Take a couple deep breaths, grab yourself a cup of coffee, light a candle, do something that brings you comfort. Allow yourself to be present in this moment.
Consider how the people we love never leave us entirely; they continue shaping us through the ordinary memories that have become part of who we are.
What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
— Helen Keller
Grief is the price we pay for love.
— Queen Elizabeth II
Hebrews 12:1
Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.
Food For Thought
There is an untethering that happens when you lose someone you love — a way of knowing yourself through them that unravels a bit, somehow feeling less secure when it exists only in memory. On this Memorial Day weekend, I find myself thinking about the ways our lives are so deeply shaped by those we do not get to keep with us always. I am especially remembering my Daddy Jim, an Army veteran for whom Memorial Day always fell right around his birthday — today, he would have been 97.
When it came time for me to apply to college, I applied to only one school. I would not recommend that strategy now, but at eighteen I was still optimistic enough to believe it would all work out. Campbell University had already captured my heart through summer soccer camps and holiday visits “in the Creek,” but the real draw was simpler than that: my Daddy Jim and Grandma Jung lived just across the highway.
I think they got exactly what one would expect from a college-aged granddaughter — late evening visits carrying a laundry basket full of week-old soccer clothes, unannounced appearances for homemade dinners, and requests to shower somewhere that did not require flip-flops. I would walk in through the back door announcing, “Hey, I’m just gonna take a shower if that’s okay.” Daddy Jim, always quick with a response, would grin and say either, “I’m not sure you can get it out the door,” or “Bring it back when you’re done.”
Recently, I took my children to walk around Campbell’s campus. We found our way to the chemistry building and stood outside Daddy Jim’s old office — third floor, brown wooden door beside the lab. Suddenly, memories came rushing back all at once. I could see him sitting behind his desk. I remembered running in between classes to grab one of the Little Debbie Nutter Butters he kept in his snack drawer for me. I remembered meeting him there to walk to lunch, and the day he loaned me his shoes because I had shown up for lab in flip-flops.
It struck me then how much of who we are lives inside these small memories. We carry people not only through the big milestones of life, but through the little moments and stories that become stitched into us over time.
Our life with Daddy Jim was made up of these kinds of memories. Some belong to all of us: his cluttered office, his quick wit, his deep kindness, his love of science and teaching. Others are smaller and more particular. For his grandchildren, he was the one who scratched your back when you asked. He folded origami shapes. He knew the magic of crossword puzzles and Rubik’s cubes. When we were children at the beach, he was always the first one into the waves. Even later, when age kept him from joining us in the ocean, he would sit up in his rocking chair, delighting in our summer joy.
That may be one of the greatest gifts people leave behind: not simply memories we revisit, but ways of seeing and loving that continue shaping us. Daddy Jim’s life taught us curiosity, humility, compassion, and wonder. He showed us that intelligence and kindness belong together. That faith and questions can coexist. That love is often expressed most powerfully in showing up again and again.
I think that is why grief feels so disorienting. When someone has helped shape the way you understand yourself and the world, losing them can feel like losing part of your own grounding. But memory slowly becomes a bridge between absence and presence — in the stories we tell, the values we carry, the habits we inherited, the ways we laugh, listen, teach, and love.
Perhaps that is what it means to remain tethered after all. Not that we avoid loss, but that the lives of those we love become woven so deeply into our own that even death cannot fully separate us. We carry them forward — not perfectly, not without sorrow — but faithfully, lovingly, and together.
Spend a few quiet moments each day intentionally noticing the “small inheritances” you carry—an expression, a habit, a way of thinking or loving that you recognize as coming from someone you love. When you notice one, pause and name it silently as a way of keeping connection alive in the ordinary.
If you find writing to be a healing practice, write a short letter to someone you have lost from the present day—nothing formal, just an honest update on your life—and include at least one moment from this week where you noticed their influence in how you responded, loved, or showed up. Then keep the letter somewhere visible (a journal, a desk, a kitchen drawer) and return to add to it over the week, almost like continuing a conversation across time.
For a printable version of today's reflection Click Here!
Blessing
God of Memory and Presence,
Hold us in the tension of love that remains even when those we love are no longer here in the same way. Thank you for the lives that shaped us, and give us grace to carry them forward with gratitude, and peace to trust that nothing truly beloved is ever lost to You.
Amen.
A little Table Talk for your table...
What are the subtle ways a person can still “live on” in someone else—not as a memory they visit, but as a way of thinking, responding, or moving through the world?
Can you think of a time when you noticed small habits, values, choices or ways of loving others, and realized, “I think I learned this from someone”? When was that and how did it make you feel?
How can remembering the influence of our loved ones change the way we approach ordinary moments and relationships in our present?
Try taking it to the Kids Table...
What are some ways we can still feel connected to someone we love, even if we can’t see them anymore?
Can you think of a time when you did something or made a choice and realized, “I think I learned this from someone who cares about me”? What was it?
How do the people who love us help shape the way we treat others, even in small everyday moments like school, home, or play?
Meet This WEek’s Writer...
Lin Story-Bunce is a North Carolina native and lovingly calls Greensboro, NC home. She earned a Masters of Divinity from Wake Forest University and has served a wonderful and thoughtful congregation at College Park Baptist Church since 2009, pastoring to families and their faith development. Most of all, Lin loves the moments she gets to connect with her family, snowboarding with her wife, and keeping up with their four kiddos and two energetic pups. Lin is a teacher, preacher, dreamer, and procrastinator who has a knack for trying to do way too many things in far too little time.
To hear more from Lin throughout the week, follow along on our Instagram!