Living a Memory of Life

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What can be more painful?  The only thing worse then living a memory of life is living a memory of life that was painful when it was actually happening.  It is like stepping on gum on a hot August day and leaving the sticky memory of it everywhere you walk.  Sometimes we don’t realize what a mess we made of things until we retrace our behavior.

When things happen and life changes abruptly, many times it seems natural to try and keep things the same. Emotionally healthy people eventually begin to realize it is draining to do this and begin to let go of the old and allow life to begin to flow naturally again, keeping the memories in their minds or in conversation or on paper where memories belong.  Our memories make up our past and effect the present and the future but they are not life itself. They do not need to stay locked up away from our life like a priceless baseball card incased in plastic never touched or enjoyed and feared that handling it will somehow alter its value.  Isn’t that what we do when we lose someone?  Our fear is that if we are honest about the memory and ourselves we may devalue what we miss so greatly in their absence.  Why do we want what we didn’t want when we had it when we don’t have it any longer

The deeply wounded well-meaning person living a memory begins to become hardened and dead just like the person or relationship that no longer lives and the person becomes a living breathing statue and somewhere undocumented they die before death itself.  When you live a life that no longer exists eventually neither do you.

The differences between men and women and memories are astoundingly different.  Generally speaking, one of the main differences between us, is, how we remember things.  A woman living in a memory, drags it everywhere she goes, right? She sits it down in the chair next to her, and introduces it to everyone she meets.  A man living a memory sits on his like Horton the elephant, protecting it not budging even when all things around him are collapsing and disappearing until he himself disappears.  Like an elephant on a branch too small to support it, there is no way we can support a memory of life with life itself.

A few years back I accompanied my daughter to a VFW hall where she had a meeting with an older gentleman who ran a dinner theatre.  As we sat at the bar there were 3 or 4 men holding their beers with both hands only releasing them to adjust their hat or to take a swallow, staring into the glass as if they were guarding a secret from the enemy. I remember feeling as if I had entered a circle that ceased to be what it was because I entered it. I had the distinct feeling that real time had stopped and that was the only place they could sit and remain quietly with their memories that had become their life.

There seems to me to be a very fine line between habit and loyalty.  I think we sometimes think if we do the same thing over and over somehow things won’t change. The only thing that stays the same is the behavior while everything around us continues to change and move in another direction.  Change is not only inevitable, it is constant, like a summer storm that comes from no where, sending us running for shelter and stopping us for the few minutes it reigns king deciding what stays and what goes. It takes us inside ourselves taking our breath away humbling us into the realization that we can lose something or someone in an instant leaving us a little more aware of the fragileness of life.  But what comes after a summer storm?  Children have puddles to jump in, birds and wildlife have water to drink, the air is freshly charged and cleaner and we look around and see what is important to us, or sometimes it forces us to rebuild and start over.  Don’t live a memory.  Cherish it and share it.  Chronicle it journal it. It is our education and also for educating those less experienced.  Don’t sit on it like Horton, for surely they will only see the behavior associated with the memory, crouched and hovering silent or like a loud conversation you involuntarily overhear of which seems obtrusive and one sided those are the side effects of living a memory on others.  Whether it is a good memory or a bad one telling the whole story on paper will net healing and healing enables us to continue the struggle that is human existence.  Perhaps it is a journal simply to leave to your family and loved ones after you return to the life before life.  We don’t need to write a best seller.  A handwritten note or letter or card can touch a person’s heart in places a gift could never find the path to. Imagine if we wrote what we really felt and gave it to those we love?  Don’t live your memories.  Take the i out of live and replace it with an o and keep the love flowing and like a good memory and a summer storm when they come, let them take us by surprise.

~Cynthia