The Persistence of Memory

Jimmies. Grinnies. The Rankin Bridge. Ardmore. “Pump an Iron.” Panther Hollow. Normalville.

My head is spinning with threads of memories snapping back like a gumband stretched into a dark room. Whap! Lunchtime runs for pepperoni rolls. Snap! Driving through McKees Rocks. Slap!! The bridge between a parking garage and a cancer ward where I took my sister daily.

I walked away from Pittsburgh 12 years ago to shut the door on the most painful chapter of my life: trying, and failing, to save my sister from cancer. I’m the oldest. I took it personally. I left a cloud of painful memories and abruptly broken ties in my wake. It was not my finest hour, but it was a hellish time. When I packed my car and left, I let the memories fade as fast as they would.

I’ve been in and around my old haunts for a week, and they’re speaking to me. Some whisper how they miss me. My heart leapt – a feeling I haven’t had in years – when I stepped out into the cool green of the Laurel Highlands, one of my favorite places on Earth. The story threads of my life here are wound around streetsigns and pizza joints, pathways and monuments, steep hillsides and old mining towns. It’s a web, a maze, triggering so many forgotten things.

I haven’t made sense of it all yet, but one thing is clear: I’m not afraid of it anymore. I’m riding the emotions like the Thunderbolt to see where they’ll lead me next.

What Matters

Sometimes, life must come to a complete stop. By “life,” I mean the treadmill of the everyday. The responsibilities we create for ourselves. The expectations that others have for us. The routine where we juggle all the balls as fast as we can.

Life, however, is so much more than that. It is the interconnectedness we have with each other, the mysteries of birth and death. When these two monumental events collide, as they did in my family this week, it’s a time to stop and just be there. Be present. Be available. Just be.

It’s also a time to remember we are not alone. The people we touch, the community we’re a part of, provide, unbidden, a safety net, an outpouring of love, to counter the grief and the pain. We often forget about these connections until they spring into action. And yet there they are, and I’m so grateful for their presence.

It’s times like this that strip away the everyday and distill life to what matters. Family. Friends. Love. Time. Time is a gift, and none of us know how much of it we have. Share that gift with others – the bonds between us are what matters.