Memories

 

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My friend Ruth, from Connecticut, commented on yesterday’s post, The House of the Seven Uncles.  She noted that she never made it to one of those Club 27 evenings.  A mutual friend always told her she was going and then reported “what a great time was had by all.”  Then she wrote something that has been with me all day: “Funny how everything just ends up being only a memory.”

I read it several times and been mulling over it all day.  I concluded it was obvious, simple, and profound all at the same time.  Everything we do or experience becomes a memory or potential memory the moment we need the past tense to relate it. 

Our lives are a tapestry of memories.  Sometimes we create our memories by the places we go or the things we do or say.  Likewise, the actions and words of others create memories.  Yet other memories are created by random events.  Memories can happy or sad.  They can be touching or painful.  Or memories can be subtle, neutral, nothing special and, yet they stay with us as vividly as the most pleasurable or painful things that have ever happened to us.  In this latter case, there is no rhyme or reason why one particular iteration of a routine activity becomes a strong memory.

Some of us seem to remember everything.  Others blissfully live in the present.  Some of us dwell and obsess in the past while others fret not about things that have already happened and cannot be altered.

We accumulate memories with each passing year.  As we get older, we hold on to some memories, good or bad, over others.  We should cherish them but not let them dominate or control our lives.  For many of us, we seem to need to tell everyone about them with increasing frequencies, sometimes over and over again to the people we love the most. 

As we age, memory can fade, and we have a hard time recalling things.  Special memories, again good or bad, can get exaggerated so they only bear a trace of what really happened.  Then there is dementia in its various forms.  I knew a fellow who could remember details about his experiences from thirty years ago, but couldn’t remember what he had for lunch just an hour ago.   

Some writers write in part to preserve and illuminate their memories.  In this blog, the pieces with the most hits are when I reminisce warmly about life growing up.  Music is another way we pluck and resonate the strings of our memory.   There are many quotes about memories.  There were some quotes that were a bit dark and focus on how memories can tear you up.  I like the more positive ones.   Here are a few of my favorites.

• Memory is the scribe of the soul.  ~ Aristotle
• Take care of your memories.  For you cannot relive them.  ~ Bob Dylan
• Unless we remember, we cannot understand. ~ E. M. Forester
• Sometimes you never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory. ~ Dr. Suess
• When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.  ~ Mark Twain
• The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.  ~ Frederich Nietzche
• The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his life becomes.  ~ Søren Kierkegaard
• Vanity play lurid tricks with our memory.  ~ Joseph Conrad
• Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.  ~ Stephen Wright
• Every man’s memory is his private literature.  ~ Aldous Huxley

Yes, “everything just ends up being only a memory.”  I think this is a good thing.  Memories a part of life and being alive.  Thank you for inspiring this post Ruth.