After lab one night, one of my students wondered at my recollection. I told her that it’s not the panacea she feels it to be because in addition to all of the impressive things I remember, I also remember things that no longer matter and are no longer true. I can recollect conversations I had with people verbatim, but they would flatly deny ever saying those things, even when I can produce transcripts in some cases attesting to the contrary. So many chapters of my life opened and shut that if not for pictures there’s no actual physical evidence that those things ever happened. Days that once held meaning to me hold none at all today, and other days that are meaningful to me are not meaningful to anyone else I know. Most of my days pass without comment, vanishing ignominiously into the ether of the past where they stay only until my brain decides to recollect them.
Regular readers know that last summer gifted me some unique and difficult challenges. Enough time passed that now I feel the sting of loss without mourning. I would really like to call my dead friend just to chat, about anything and everything really, just to hear her voice. From the scrimshaw she left me when she died, I kept a few pictures, but even the smell attached to her belongings faded to where I no longer register it. If not for her ex husband’s periodic harassment because he thinks I have things of material worth on which he’d like to lay his grubby hands, she would be dead to almost everyone who ever knew her.
Sadly she’s not the only person that I used to know. I realized last week and wrote about how due to my military childhood I have “friends” who no longer are friends due to distance in space and in time. While I am happy to celebrate in the next few weeks four years of zero contact whatsoever from my ex wife, there are other people who used to do things with me who no longer even acknowledge that they know me, and so large swaths of my life fade into obscurity until and unless I mention them in class as an aside. Back when Gotye’s catchy ballad first came out, I remember someone asked me if “Somebody That I Used to Know” was a tale of my life, and last week a former student contacted me thinking she’d run across one of my ex girlfriends randomly. Apparently my story is not rare, which should comfort me, but it kind of makes me more sad. How many of you are stuck in days of ignominity?
We think that things and people are important in our lives, and sometimes they are. All too often the people who we desire to keep a station of importance are the ones who depart while the persistent ones leach away our time and talents. We think that days are important, and then other days overshadow them. Sometimes this coincides with the passage of time as others are no longer around to remember them with us. Thanks to ProFlowers I am reminded annually of everyone to whom I’ve ever given flowers when they give me an offer to save if I do it again. Most of those people are gone from my life and don’t think about me much if at all as far as I know. I used to celebrate days that have meaning to me that mean nothing to anyone else as far as I can figure because other people made choices and left me alone with my thoughts on those days in lieu of their companionship. However things have come to be, today was supposed to be an important day in my life, and now it will probably pass ignominiously into the ether aside from the fact that I wrote an article today drawing attention to it. Very few people would even know why, and it’s possible that none of those who know will even care. That’s sad to me because I did and I do. It was a great day for me.
Today will be a great day too. Although I don’t really smile all that much and since I don’t have a Facebook you might not know, but I regularly travel and go on adventures. I’m living the life I like the best I can with the company available to me. Sometimes I go hiking or kayaking or shooting, and sometimes I leave town or even the country. Those days might seem ignominious, but they have made me who I am, and so you can see them when you watch me even if you weren’t there when I went.
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