Left to right, Molly, Matthew, and Mira McLain. The frog is in the middle.

This last weekend, the McLain family (Molly, her sister and brother) and the rest of us near and within the region of Valley City, North Dakota, laid the ashes of Harley McLain to rest next to his wife, Julie. It got me thinking in a number of directions, about history, or why I got into the profession in the first place. This includes how studying memory and remembrance is monumentally important to us as individuals, and as a civilization, and as the broader human continuum. Historians are trained to see the world through the eyes of others (or to see the world from our eyes through the eyes of others, which is two lenses before we arrive at the event). So while at the funeral, I thought about what others might have been thinking, and how their relationship with Harley was much different than mine (Harley and I only had the chance to know one another for less than 2 years). So I guess I’ll leave it open-ended at that, for now. Except for one more point.

Molly McLain, my fiancee and Harley’s oldest daughter, noted this on her social media page, with picture, shortly after the funeral:

We buried our dad’s ashes next to our mom today, and as we all placed him in the ground, we found there was a frog in the hole looking up at us. It seems our dad is still playing little tricks on us. RIP and long live your memory Harley McLain.

Memory is the historian’s business. We capture and archive memories and experience so that they can be revisited and explored in infinite ways.