A reminiscent tale is one that features a character who talks about some experience that happened to him or her in the past. In other words, the character recalls, or reminisces about, events that have already taken place; these reminiscences comprise the bulk of the narrative. In "Something to Remember Me By," the narrator is an older man—he refers to himself as Grandfather Louie—who is evidently near the end of his own life. He tells his son, at the conclusion of the narrative, that everyone he spoke of in the story is "gone now" and that he has "made [...] preparations," presumably for his own death.

As a result of his age and situation, Louie wishes to leave something more to his son, something in addition to his estate, which is not "large," and so he reflects on the time in his life when his mother was dying of cancer. He explains that where "there is too much going on" in a person's life, when it seems more than they can stand, he might choose "to assume that nothing in particular is happening" in order to avoid the pain of facing reality. We might think of life as being like a "turntable"—smooth and flat—but we later realize that it was actually "a whirlpool, a vortex" during this time. Louie explains that he "knew she was dying and didn't allow [him]self to think about it [...]." For this reason, he nearly missed her death and being with his family during that important time. He was tempted from his responsibility to his family by the promise of sex with a strange woman, who robbed him and left him stranded and naked across town.