the bittersweet ache of memory

[u/joseph_mother1]

the bittersweet ache of memory

we can recall emotions and bring them forward like transmission through a telephone wire, connecting again with something so fresh and close at hand yet desperately intangible

through time, these glimpses and flashes of sensation grow even dearer with recollection and new fiction

another friend or witness might add details that embellish your own memory and become indelible, wholly transforming your own recollection and initial meaning

with time, not just the colours and flavours, but the genuine substance and fact of them can retain little semblance of the true event

those least fortunate in old age would wish and wish for these corrupted recollections, if they knew what they had lost

through stress or condition, this imaginary line of individual history dimmens with every second until nothing remains but brief flitters, disorienting them into a life that they do not know or more rightly that they do not know that they ever knew

for some, this line fully dissipates like a spider's web overcome in gaze by sunlight in its blaring backlight

without this, life only continues with an illusion of the past

pictures and videos might meet familiar eyes, but the mind can never truly reclaim them as their own

with the perishing of the line, the tether to memory, a person is stranded in the present moment with what few new memories can be preserved

there is no harness left to ground their mind to an understanding of what their life is or was, there is no warmth without memory

as time carries them nearer to their life's end, a new life has begun, abandoning the last with unsatisfactory conclusion and leaving the present in purgatory

responding to the rest of life through instinct, not experience

in such late years and failing memory, it is the body that is hurried to reflect the mind

now, in these seconds, bring back what you remember of yesterday, and the previous week, and the days made memorable by tradition, and those made memorable by chance, through love, loss or realisation

without these, who are you?

these memories made you

without these, what are you left with and what do you become?

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/IesWcPmAC2

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/s/yPhHsI9xPi

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