Bridges

By | August 17, 2017
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Bridges

Once there was a time when I could hear the sound of birds singing and feel the warmth of the sun washing over me – and the beauty of a blossoming spring touched my soul and raised my spirits and brought the light of happiness into my life.

This morning for reasons unknown to me, I’ve plucked some wispy and delicate memories from the pool that swirls around inside my mind, memories from springs past. This morning is shaped by those thready, bittersweet memories of things lost and days gone forever. Or are they?

With memories flooding and darkness looming and the still and silent night not yet acquiescing to the dawn, I sit pensive and wonder why. Yet I know, that the sun will shine, birds will sing and better happier memories will come and lure me away from this dark and sad and quiet morning. Spring will come and life will go on and everything will be as it should.

So powerful are memoires, yet memories defy description. Memories can be beautiful, whimsical, or discomforting; they can be full of joy or of deep and overwhelming sorrow . Memories are as fragile as the gossamer wings of an angel and as fleeting as a falling star on a cold clear winter night. Memories can be as whimsical and as useless as moonlight shadows dancing on a tranquil twilight bay and as essential as the air we breathe. Memories are eternal and ethereal enigmas. We all have them, we know they are there, but memories remain as intangible and untouchable as a rainbow as deep and unfathomable as the oceans.

Memories are the only links we have to what we used to be. Our memories make us who we are. We are the sum of our memories. Memories are the bridges to yesterday – they are the only passage back across the eternal river of time.

These fragile wisps, these ephemeral sparkles we call “memories” are never really accurate glimpses of our pasts, rather they are surrealistic watercolor paintings, rendered beautifully by the artistry of our subconscious minds. The paintings often look far better than the actual event, for memories, like old paintings, fade with time; the happiest times seem happier and the saddest times seem even sadder. One thing is for sure: nothing we remember is ever quite the way it really was.

We have no way to measure such ephemeral things. There are no gauges or instruments with which to measure the accuracy of our memories. All we know about the events we remember is how we remember them. While I am positive that nothing is the way remember it, it is the only bridge I have to my past. Memories are the bridges to yesterday.

Memories are all we have, memories make us who we are. Without them we have no yesterday, we have no past; and without a past we have no future – all we would have would be the present moment. We’d have no bridges to yesterday, no roads to tomorrow, we would only exist from moment to moment in the present.

Even though memories may be evanescent and even though they offer only carefully crafted renditions of our past – they are the only links we have between who we are and who we used to be, between who we were and what we may be tomorrow.

If we live long enough there will come a time when memories will be all we have left when everything else is gone. Sometimes, even those memories are taken from us, leaving us alone and without a past and without a friend. If that happens we won’t even have ourselves left. To be old and alone and without a single memory is the saddest place we can ever be. Or is it?

Memories of springs past dance through my mind. These memories are both sad and happy, and swirl around in my mind in a multicolored whirlpool, spinning around and around as I pluck the memories I choose to remember from that spinning spiral. I try my best not to choose the ones which bring me pain, but in that opalescent spinning pool, sometimes memories mix together in patterns the mind cannot decipher.

I’m waiting for spring to come. I am yearning for those picture-perfect, watercolor springs of my childhood — of days when I stood in a field of yellow daffodils and dandelions, my hands tugging at the string of a kite dancing and darting in the soft blue sky of spring.

I’m not sure exactly how I should feel on this late winter morning. There are signs of spring all around. Sometimes I am torn between the person I used to be and the person I am now. I’m pulling the future toward me and dragging the past behind me. We can’t trust our memories yet we cannot live without them.

More than anything else, memories are thed bridges to yesterday.

One thought on “Bridges

  1. Holly H C

    Oh how true this all was and I am old enough to totally relate to it, well said!!!

    Reply

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