memories

“I don’t know if I can stop myself from thinking about the past.”
“Then perhaps you should stop trying so hard. The past can eventually fade away on its own if you’ll replace it with something else.” 

- The Widow of Larkspur Inn

"but then, faith would not be necessary if one could be sure about everything."

 
- The Widow of Larkspur Inn

Two very powerful statements. So hard to live out. Sometimes I don't want the past to fade away. But in reality, it will and all that would be left is the remains of memories and life. I think of memories as paintings. They are ever changing as the memory is created. Same for the portrait, the artist sees a painting morph itself into something resembling what was intended but much better than that.

A childhood memory is often distorted by what is, what should've been, and what it isn't. Pieces are added or subtracted according to the mind of the adult remembering. They are shadows. Elusive and sometimes dangerous. They make up a large part of who we are, but mostly are who we were. Ever moving forward, that is life. Constantly changing and growing, we live and die, while the memories of us fade in time.

Memories are lonely. They play back like a tape recording and when the reel is finished, there is an empty hole that the memory filled for just a little while. We push stop on the movie of our memories and walk away, thinking that we leave them behind. But we don't. They are burned forever in our minds, stamped on our souls, and bleed from our hearts.

What memories do I want to keep? What do I do with the ones I don't? And what will people remember me by? Eventually, I will fade into the unknown, a smoke of a memory, then nothing. And I am ok with that.