Memory and Life

It's hard to believe that it's been almost 9 months since my father passed away. When I think back to 9 months ago, it's hard to really remember everything that was going on. I had just resigned from the Peace Corps, was taking care of my father, and in the end, was spending all day in the hospital with my step-mom and sister, amongst a cast of rotating family members and friends of my father's.

While it is so difficult to remember, I have an acute awareness to every detail of what was going on. I know this seems to contradict the whole "not remembering" thing, but it's almost as if I was outside of myself. When I think back to the memories of this time, I don't see things from my own eyes; rather, I see everything from a bird's eye view. I see myself in pictures and memories like I'm watching a film. I see snapshots, frozen in time, sometimes blurry like paintings, but completely realistic.

There are things I will always associate with this time: cell phone tetris (which I played compulsively in order to avoid all the drama that was happening when there were more than 3 people in the hospital room), the crummy parking garage at the hospital, eating cereal in the cafeteria, candied pineapple from Whole Foods, and a bunch of other stuff that would make absolutely no sense to anyone else.

I've always been fascinated with memory - mainly because I have a notoriously bad one. This year has been one of the most fascinating years of my life in term of memory retention. Everything is pretty vivid, whereas before everything was sort of murky and unimportant. It's been a pretty remarkable year. I started it as a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova and 2 months later was at my father's funeral. I moved to Seattle and started life over again and later found myself cutting through the rugged Norwegian landscape aboard a train. And I started a new job.

If there's anything I've learned this year, it's that life is fleeting. There's no time to get lost in the complications of it. There's no time to waste in front of the TV for hours at a time. There's no time to make excuses for not going on your dream vacation. There's no time for staying in a dead end job that makes you miserable. I live by the day and I determine my future based on happiness and fulfillment. People say "life is short" all the time. Is it? It's only short if you live it this way. If I died tomorrow, I'm not so sure my life would have been cut "short". I've done a lot in my almost 27 years of life. The ratio of things that I'm proud of greatly outweighs things I regret or wish I could change. I've lived my life, and will continue to live my life, with purpose and urgency. It may seem naive, but I'm happy and satisfied.

In the vein of all of this talk of memory, I recently came upon these pictures of me, my dad and my sister that were saved on my external hard drive. Now these are times I absolutely cannot recall for the life of me - but, they're still important to me and it's nice to look at pictures in order to help fill in the blank periods of time for which I have absolutely no recollection.