The Constant Struggle Against Forgetting

It started with chrysanthemums.

I was looking for information about La Toussaint, All Saints’ Day in France, which is observed on November 1. French families traditionally visit cemeteries at this time, tending family graves and bringing flowers. And the flower most associated with Toussaint is the chrysanthemum.

I knew chrysanthemums were everywhere in France around Toussaint, but I had not really thought about how exclusively they are associated with cemeteries and remembrance. In France, apparently, you don’t ordinarily show up at someone’s house with a lovely pot of mums as a hostess gift. Giving chrysanthemums to a living person can be quite a social faux pas.

This was interesting information to acquire just after Travis had been given two beautiful pots of mums for his birthday. We also have large pots of mums outside the side entrance to the boutique.

In Arkansas, of course, chrysanthemums have an entirely different job. They mean fall. They sit beside pumpkins and front doors. We give them to people who are very much alive and expect them to be pleased.

But reading about chrysanthemums and Toussaint reminded me of a day many years ago in Déols, France, and sent me looking for some old photographs.

Châteauroux and nearby Déols had once been home to a large American military community. During the 1950s and 1960s, American servicemen arrived with their wives and children and built lives there alongside their French neighbors. My family was there with my dad from 1960 to 1962.

Babies were born there, too. And some of them died there. During those years, 128 American children died in Déols, most of them, according to a French newspaper account, only about a week after birth. Their parents eventually went home. The American military presence ended. Years became decades. And many of the children remained in France.

Over time, the individual graves disappeared. The children’s remains were eventually combined into a common grave. A group of people decided that their names should not disappear along with their graves. The historical association Châteauroux, c’était l’Amérique, working with the city of Déols and others, undertook a project to create a permanent memorial bearing the names of the 128 American children.

My sister Sheila Witherington and Michèle Chabenat were among those who worked to make that memorial a reality.

I remember the day it was dedicated in 2017.

My grandson Zac was one of the young people chosen to take part in the ceremony. In the photograph below, he is helping carry a large arrangement of flowers.

The inscription reads:

AUX ENFANTS AMÉRICAINS
DÉCÉDÉS À DÉOLS
1953 ~ 1965

To the American children who died in Déols, 1953 to 1965.

Lookng at the photographs again, I wondered whether the flowers Zac carried that day might have been chrysanthemums. They weren’t. There are yellow and purple flowers, roses and greenery. But I realized that wasn’t really the connection anyway. The connection was remembrance.

At the dedication, Michel Blondeau, then mayor of Déols, spoke about why the memorial mattered. One phrase from his remarks seems to encompass the whole story:

“la lutte constante contre l’oubli.”
The constant struggle against forgetting.

Forgetting seems passive. We imagine that some things simply slip away with time. But remembering can require action. Someone has to keep the records. Someone has to preserve the photographs. Someone has to tell the story. Someone has to say the names. Sometimes someone has to put those names in stone. And sometimes someone carries the flowers.

The individual graves were gone, but 128 children were no longer anonymous. Their names were there.

And on the day those names were memorialized, French and Americans gathered together. My grandson carried flowers. Perhaps that is part of la lutte constante contre l’oubli, too.

And that brings me back to chrysanthemums. The chrysanthemums placed on graves will die. The flowers Zac carried that day in Déols died long ago. The point was never to make the flowers last. The act of bringing them is what matters.

It says: You were here. You mattered. We remember you.

Perhaps remembrance isn’t only something we feel. It is something we do. We visit. We tend. We preserve a name. We keep an old photograph. We tell a story that might otherwise disappear. We carry the flowers. And every now and then, perhaps without realizing it, we take our turn in the constant struggle against forgetting.

As for the chrysanthemums currently surrounding my own life, their assignment is considerably less solemn. The ones outside the boutique are saying, It’s fall. Come on in. And the two given to Travis are saying, Happy birthday. We’re glad you’re here. We’re keeping them. But the next time I’m invited to someone’s home in France, I’ll bring something else.