Shared memories are the best memories. The older the memory, the better it seems to get. But that comes with a bit of a conundrum. The older you get the fewer people there are to share that memory with. Your oldest memories become lonely. We all know that is especially true during this time of year. Our thoughts wander back to the days of our youth. Christmas as children is the best! Well, I should say that is the way it was with me, as I had a wonderful childhood. I wasn’t always aware of just how great it was at the time, but in retrospect, a real Hallmark childhood. I did get the very best! Not in toys or clothes or any of the material things but in caring and love. Our memories are just moments in time, frozen in our mind, relived and refined. Memories do get better with age.

  I joined the Navy in 1971. I left home never to return to that world. I certainly wasn’t expecting that when I left. Everyone I knew and served with talked about going home. That was the goal, to finish this enlistment and go back home. It was very rare to find anyone on their first enlistment saying otherwise. In fact, anyone that stayed beyond that initial enlistment was called a lifer! The euphemism is an accurate description, you are leaving your life behind. I did go home but quickly discovered home wasn’t as I had left it. Everything was changed. My bedroom was gone, that home sold. There was no room for me at “home.” My parents house was a one bedroom affair, downsized they called it. I was just visiting. That realization hit like a brick, I was home but just as a visitor now. My friends from school were either working or away. The whole dynamic had changed as well. Now I was an “adult” and expected to act and do adult things, you know, be responsible. I had grown up. At least in the eyes of others I had. 

 What I’m saying is I have memories prior to 1971, old memories. The number of people I can share those memories with grow fewer each year. All the grandparents gone, my parents gone, one brother and one sister gone, and even some of those childhood friends, gone. Those that remain are far and few between, those that would have known the memory. We tend to think of sharing as giving something to others, but in the case of memories that isn’t how that works. When sharing a memory with someone that wasn’t there, it is just a story. To the one hearing the story it may sound like fiction. The strangest thing about those memories is when we do share them, there is often some fiction involved. We tend to remember things a bit differently as we age, especially when there is no one to dispute that telling. The memory does change slightly, morphing into a story.

  I’m a bit sad about all of that and that is a natural thing. I feel no desire, no need to seek help or medicate my emotions. I take solace in telling the stories. In two days my sons will be fifty years old. They will have reached the half century mark. I have grandchildren that are young adults now. I even have a great granddaughter. This will be her first Christmas. It is the beginning for her, and years she won’t remember, but great grandpa is recording the story. I have a storehouse of shared memories with my family and friends spanning a half century! It takes time to age a memory, it takes more time before they can really be shared. When you discover that your oldest memories are getting lonely, you begin to share the new. A new memory? The term is relative. After you reach a certain age years become a little while back, or “when I was a kid” implying that was a long time ago. 

  Old memories shared as a mutual experience are the best memories of all. The stories don’t always agree and we laugh about that. It does take time for that to happen, for us to be comfortable with that. For some, that never happens. There are those that just can’t let go of the past, whereas I have just grown comfortable living with that. My only regret is in not being able to truly share all of my past, in the present. All I can do is tell the stories. And one thing else I have learned, you don’t always need to know the rest of the story, there are circumstances were that is best left in the past. I’m not saying forget about them, I’m just saying leave them there. 

                                                                                  

                                

Memories and stories created over time. Some begin once upon a time, and others were just a little while ago.