Dead and Gone… The Things We Still Do Their Way

By Gary Payne, MBA Founder of FuneralCostOntario.ca Families carry forward all kinds of habits without giving them much thought. Some are useful. Some are oddly specific. Others survive mainly because nobody has ever seen a reason to do things differently. A recipe is made the same way every Christmas. The car is packed in a particular order before a trip. The doors are checked twice before bed. Someone cuts the grass in the same pattern their father did, even though they would probably have trouble explaining why. Nobody sits a child down to teach most of this. You simply grow up watching how things are done around the house. Your father packs the car a certain way. Your mother knows when something is cooked without looking at a clock. Years later, you find yourself doing the same thing and only then realize where it came from. Sometimes another person catches it before you do. You say something your father used to say, or reach for the same old tool in the garage, and a family member gives you a look. Nothing more needs to be said. Everyone knows where it came from. Recipes probably cause more of these conversations than anything else. Families can argue for years about what was actually included, how long something was cooked, or whether the person who made it ever measured anything properly. Someone remembers a written recipe. Someone else insists the written version was never followed. Instructions such as “a little,” “just enough,” or “until it looks right” are somehow expected to settle the matter. They rarely do. Someone eventually changes the recipe, usually for a perfectly sensible reason, and the first response is that it does not taste the same. Then the old recipe card comes out. Half the family cannot read the handwriting, and the other half insists the card is wrong anyway. By the time dinner is served, nobody has settled the original question, but several stories have been told about the person who used to make it. The less useful habits survive too. There is always somebody who arrives far too early, keeps pieces of wood that might be needed someday, or takes the same route across town long after a better one has opened. The person who complained most about those habits is often the one who ends up carrying them on. My father had his own way of doing many things. Some of it made perfect sense. Some of it probably made sense mainly to him. Since he passed away, I have caught myself doing something the way he did it or using one of his expressions without thinking. Usually I am halfway through an ordinary task before I notice. Not long ago, I put something back in the same place he always kept it. There was no particular reason it had to go there, and I doubt I had ever consciously decided to keep it there. It was simply where it belonged. I realized afterward that I had been doing that for years. That is often how these things continue. Nobody announces that a habit is now part of the family. Nobody even notices it leaving one generation and arriving in the next. It simply remains in the house, attached to a meal, a job, a phrase or a way of doing something. Of course, every generation makes changes. A recipe gets adjusted. A job that once took an afternoon can now be finished in an hour. A rule that seemed absolute when we were children quietly disappears once we are the adults making the rules. Still, enough remains that somebody usually recognizes the original. Sometimes it is the very habit everyone once found annoying. The reminder to bring a sweater. The need to check the weather before leaving. The insistence on arriving while everyone else is still setting up. We laugh about these things, but we also keep doing them. A familiar habit can bring up a story without anyone trying very hard. Someone says an old expression, packs the car a certain way or reaches for the same battered tool, and the conversation moves naturally to the person who did it first. There is no formal moment of remembrance. It is simply part of whatever else is happening that day. Years later, the habit may turn up in a grandchild who never met the person who started it. They may follow the same routine or use the same phrase without knowing where it came from. To them, it is not family history. It is simply the way things are done. Nobody decides which habits will last. The useful ones probably have an advantage, although usefulness is clearly not required. Some remain because they save time. Some remain because the family likes them. Others remain because nobody has found a better place to keep that old tool.