I have some pretty amazing memories with my friends and even if we were experiencing a horrific reality at the time there was always laughter, jokes, and the most valuable lessons learned.
I feel I am fortunate in that I can remember... that my senses haven't left me (yet) and every time I felt despair or unimaginable grief someone was always there who threw me a life raft to save me from drowning in my tears. That makes me very grateful.
As a writer, chronicler, photographer of all things in this path that is my life and having lived with those doing the same, I have volumes of memories I can look back at. My childhood is well documented by my family and my adulthood is well documented by myself: The time I was badly burned as a toddler and pictures of my hands wrapped up to my armpits are there; my adventures and misadventures on my horses are there; my silly plays and theatrical productions with the neighborhood kids put on for an adoring audience of parents are there; my singing in the A-choir in high school are there; my girlfriends and boyfriends are there; my first love is there; my first marriage to a artistic schizophrenic is there; finding and marrying my best friend and having our children and dealing with some very hard lessons are there... And all these types of things are what brings me here... now.
Maybe I don't remember things exactly as they happened but these are my memories and when I look at the letters I wrote (thank you for saving them Mom & Dad) or the letters and cards I saved, the pictures and little mementos (a lock of hair, a baby tooth, a pressed flower), it all comes flooding back. Sometimes all we have left is memories because the actual physical presence of those in the documents are no longer there to share them with you. I am grateful today for my beautiful and happy memories. Now if I was really "zen" I could let go of those too! Hah!
I will leave you with a pithy succinct quote and the old prayer my Methodist Grandma used to say to me as a child at bedtime, "...Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, and If I die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take..." Very reassuring to a small child who was wide awake...! Hopefully, I can continue to stay that way up and until The End...
"There are things
that we don't want to happen
but have to accept,
things we don't want to know
but have to learn,
and people we can't live without
but have to let go."
- Author Unknown -
that we don't want to happen
but have to accept,
things we don't want to know
but have to learn,
and people we can't live without
but have to let go."
- Author Unknown -