If  our lives were lived in the span of a day, I’d say I’m well past noon. Should be about happy hour, I figure. My mother turned 80 on May Day, a few days after my only daughter gave birth to my first grandson. 

It’s an interesting time in life. 

Like Tevye in the Fiddler on the Roof, I really don’t remember getting older. I see the moments when my children were born as clearly as I see my mother picking me up from school. I remember my son’s basketball games like I remember my own father finding me on the field. It’s only the mirror that reminds me, that all-knowing guardian on the bathroom wall, who throws the truth in my face every morning ... that time rolls on.

When I’ve seen the afflictions of others. I’ve wondered silently which of my senses I would rather part with. Surely not my sight, never to witness the miracle of color as the sun sinks into the sea, or my children’s first smiles. I wouldn’t give up the smell of salt in the surf, or the silent scent of pancakes on a Sunday morning. And not my ears, never to hear the last slow song at the prom, the national anthem at game time, the joyful noise of rock and roll. 

My mother suffers from dementia, which may be worse, when you lose the memory of all those things. After a lifetime of positive energy given freely to everyone she touched, to not remember ... is an unjust fate. 

I know why fire victims run past the jewelry to get the photos, memories mean so much.

While my mother sits on the shore at sunset, and my grandson glimpses his first rays of dawn, I live knowing the blood that runs thru them flows thru me. It is a tether that links us to the future, ties us to the past and will bind us together till the end of days. 

 

Live a life worth remembering,