Sunday, October 24, 2010

My Memory Is Becoming a Memory


Where am I going? Where are my keys?

Can you help me find my glasses, please?

What in the world did I come in here for?

I cannot remember anymore.


It's so easy to say the past is dead and gone...but it's not. Our past is our memory — and a big chunk of our lives.


And it's true that tomorrow may not come, and that now is all we can experience, affect, and effect — but now is NOT all we have. We also have what we had. And we have dreams about the future — which means we also have what we don't have.


I can't imagine living with amnesia or Alzheimer's. If you can't remember your past, then who are you now? If you can't dream about the future, who will you become?


I'm not sure that just living in the now and for the moment would really be all it's cracked up to be. I know what people mean when they say that , but they also assume that you get to bring "you" with you.


What would you-me-we be in the present without a past and a future to fuel our lives? I wonder...but I don't really want to find out for myself.








Friday, October 15, 2010

Winging It Home to Texas


I spent my birthday at the bedside of a friend

In the hospital, and whose life, I'm afraid, may end

Before anyone would have ever believed.


Still, she rallied under the growing threat of cancer

That has spread and for which there's no certain answer.

And for now, we are all grateful and relieved.


I wanted and needed to go to Austin to support my dear friend Janet. Stage IV cancer is nothing to face alone...and she does have a wonderful support system. I just wanted to be there for her too, at least while she was in the hospital.


She made a remarkable turnaround in a few days as she responded well to the surgical "cementing" of several of her disintegrating vertebrae. She was weaned off liquid painkillers to oral meds. And she went from unable to move to walking with a walker.


A lot of Jim's family is still in Austin, and they took good care of me. Now I'm home. Janet got to go home. And there's no place like home.


She has a long row to hoe, but she's upbeat and determined. Time will tell.


I'm grateful for many things — including growing another year older.