“I have not heard your voice in years, but my heart has conversations with you everyday” – JM
I don’t know who JM is, and I do not know the circumstance behind these aching words, but I feel them, they resonate with me. We all remember, people, places, events that are still with us long after they are gone, that have helped shape us, that lead us, grieve us, and inspire us.
I love this definition for remember, it implies keeping a memory that may be effortless or unwilled.
To remember something is to keep it with you, always, ready to be accessed. It’s like a habit. We don’t have to be told to remember a habit, it’s built into us. Remembering something suggests that it’s woven into the fabric of who we are, always there with us, a part of who we are, holding an image and space in our minds and hearts.
I was thinking about the oldest memory I have, I was 3, I was becoming a big sister. It makes sense that I would remember this event, (albeit only fragments, images and feelings). It shaped me, my sense of who I was, and who I was becoming, of who I would always be, a big sister. It informed my identity.
*This is unfinished but in keeping with the spirit of progress over perfection, I decided to post this as it was still my participation in the challenge. Maybe I will finish it later.
