A friend of mine died recently.
The cancer spread quick. Quicker than anyone thought it would.
It’s easy to say, you never know when you’re going to go. It’s harder to live the fact.
So we sit back and remember. We hold up our drinks and say a toast. We hold on to the memories for a little while longer.
I’m in one of those moods again. When I see cross-eyed, because I’m thinking about my father and my father’s father, and the ones from before that I never knew.
It’s like Matthew McConaughey said in True Detective, “Time is a flat circle.”
I have a friend that’s always nostalgic for the past. He saves every memory in that big brain of his.
But sometimes nostalgia turns bitter in the mouth.
If only because the time is past and we can’t seem to make new memories as pure as the old. Or we can never hold on to the past the way we want to.
And memories are tricky. How do we know that what we remember is what happened?
You’re probably thinking…well…that’s easy. You just know it because you lived it.
Most of us trust our own brains. But what if our brains don’t trust us? So it tells us just what we need to know to get the job done. (As I write this, I’m thinking about the Oracle in the The Matrix.)
Memories are a story. A story we tell ourselves over and over. If our memory fails us, we fill in the blanks with the details needed. Facts are not important to memories.
Our brains care more about feelings than facts.
This isn’t to say that your memories are false. It’s not like that at all. What I’m saying is, the feelings inside your brain tell the story.
To prove this, by the time you get done reading this post, you won’t remember most of it. But you will remember how it made you feel.
Which means I have my work cut out for me.
Many people that suffer from mental illness have also suffered childhood trauma. Often times these memories are partially hidden as a protective mechanism. But even repressed memories leave a mark — Healing scars that still itch.
My friend with cancer didn’t complain much.
He accepted his death with the same stoic approach he took to life.
But his wife remembers.
His kids remember.
I remember.
And it doesn’t matter what these memories become. Or how the gaps are filled in over time. Because we know how they made us feel.
Maybe a little sad at times.
Maybe a little bit nostalgic.
But mostly just happy to keep them close in our hearts, more so than in our mind.
So let us never forget, but keep the dead in our prayers…
for rest and forgiveness…
and one day,
He that trampled down death,
shall raise us up again.
Memory eternal.
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