Older Americans Month: Memories of Histories Lived

May 21st, 2013

By Dr. Henry Pacheco, NHCOA Director of Medicine and Public Health Families getting together or pictures found in the basement or attic often generate questions. Who was this? Where was this? How did we get here? Who are we?  Unfortunately, these questions may never be answered, leaving a large pool of the unknown that we have to live with. It is said that a lot is known about German history, culture and psychology, because Germans are great writers of diaries. There is an equivalent to that in Latino culture, such as sitting around the table after dinner or after lunch and having those casual conversations about lives lived decades ago. Memories triggered by some current event or the casual question of some younger, perhaps not fully engaged participant, provoking older bearers of so much oral history to weave a whole forgotten universe of experiences lived, some in this adopted country, some in the old country. So much life, so many memories, so many tears, so manyRead More