Remember Me
In this collection of essays, Lee Zacharias offers four intimate portraits of people who changed the arc of her life: a boy from her youth who was her hometown's unsuspected living memory; her buoyant, larger-than-life father-in-law; a friend whose early death prompts reflections on his complexities and convictions; and finally, Zacharias's own younger self, as embodied in the bridal gown she wore for her first wedding.
In these portraits, the act of remembering is a celebration, a salute, a making of peace, a hard accounting of the self in a mirror held up by the other, an enthusiastic wave from a great distance, an assurance that we can all see each other again.
Praise
What a gorgeous book! This quartet of essays ebbs and flows through youth and age, love and loss, death and hope—always with beauty and grace. Thoughtful, poignant, honest, and insightful, Remember Me reminds us how our past loves—family, friends, neighborhoods, landscapes—continually bloom in all of us.
Randon Billings Noble, author of Be With Me Always
An essay is an attempt to make sense of things. By that definition the pieces in Remember Me are essays, but they are also connections: to places and people and the past, how those we have lost tether us to who we are in the present. They are histories: of friends and family, of neighborhoods and neighbors, of how those we love and the places we loved them are as shifting and changing as the seasons. And they are celebrations, of the small moments that carry our memories into the future. These essays are beautiful, like a falling star, something you might never see again.
Paul Crenshaw, author of Melt With Me
Just as the four chambers of the heart work together to sustain vital functions, the four essays of Lee Zacharias's Remember Me contract and relax, robust in their purpose. This collection explores the human condition in all its complexity, leaving the reader understanding something not only about the world but about themselves. Striking details like the ashy flicker of small black-and-white TVs and ten pennies of allowance kept in a custard cup transcend time and distance. In the second essay, "Crossing the River," Zacharias asserts to name something is to stake a claim. Indeed, Remember Me does just that: it grabs hold of your heart and invites it to concurrently burgeon and rest.
Charlotte Matthews, author of Comes With Furniture and People