Krzysztof Gołuch
The UN/remembering project
 
That day at the cemetery a chilly, biting rain was falling. Nasty blows of January wind only increased the sensation of penetrating cold. The grave into which Andrzej’s coffin was to be laid had been prepared. In the empty space, beside the silent staff of the cemetery, there were only five of us. The grim pandemic time didn’t allow for larger congregations. Suddenly a stranger appeared and stood not far from us. When I asked who the woman was, I learned she was Andrzej’s mother. Over the many years of His stay at our Residential Home she had never visited Him, which made us suppose that Andrzej had no close family. As the coffin was being slowly lowered into the grave, His mother was weeping out loud. After the funeral was over, we said our quick goodbyes to the staff of the cemetery and to Andrzej’s mother, standing alone. When we were leaving the cemetery, I asked why had she never visited Him before. All I got in reply was a shrug and the laconic words. She did not remember about her son.
Sometimes in life we are confronted with this sort of UN/remembering of close ones – ill or handicapped people. Who then will remember those who don’t have family and friends? Their buddies forget quick and their deceased inmates of the Residential Home are replaced by new people. All the documents and bills of the departed are placed in the archive, and a blue binder with their name is slowly closed by one of the employees. Andrzej’s binder has now reached its final destination – a shelf in the cabinet signed “departed Inmates”.
What will be left in our memory of those who, apart from a clean bed, a place in the dining room and a handful of personal belongings leave no record in the surrounding reality and in human memory? They have no experience of being in relation with mom, dad, wife, husband, brother, sister, grandma or grandpa, who might cultivate the memory of their life.
The UN/remembering project is an attempt to face up to the personal experience of refusing to accept our inability to preserve the memory of people living at the fringes of social functioning, being ill, handicapped, abandoned by their close ones, in extreme cases even deprived of any consciousness of the purpose of their own existence. The concept of the project is to remember People of whose existence we will not be informed by any mainstream media or by family tales. Victims of UN/remembering.