I love that saying - We do not remember days, we remember moments. I am in a remembering stage today and have been all week. No, it is not because of 9-11. I actually think the hype of 9-11 is a bit much and way overkill. While every one's minds were concentrated on this, life was actually being lived. Life did not stop. We all went to work. People were born. People married. People had bachelorette parties. People died. That is more important to me than remembering where I was the morning of 9-11. I am sure much more happened that day but that.
A very good friend of mine died this week. Her illness was very sudden and as her son said at her funeral mass yesterday: The doctors said she had one in a million chance of getting this nasty disease (CJD). Her son went on to regale us with some memories of his mom. Some were really funny and some were thought provoking. The pastor went on in his sermon to talk about the moments of our own lives.
As I look back over the 57 years I have lived, I realize that I don't always remember the details of an entire day, but flashes of moments sealed in my brain. All week I have done that with my relationship with my friend - from the first moment we met till the last moment we talked to the last moment I saw her body in the casket.
But those moments that kept flashing through my mind this week were powerful moments. They were those moments that made such an impression on me that while some details were lost, that memory was firmly imprinted in my mind. Sometimes I wish I had recorded what happened, how I felt, and what lesson I learned. But then I would not have been living life in the moment.
So what is your big moment? How will you remember friends, loved ones, your life? What have you done that you have found significant enough to remember?
I don't know about you but when I remember moments of my life with my friend, it is like I am being transported right back to that time. I remember how sometimes she pissed me off so much I wondered why we were even friends. I remember how she was right by my side during some of my happiest moments and some of the worst moments in my life. She was indeed a person who was 'one in a million' who had the luck in life to catch a 'one in million' disease. I can just see her now - wondering why it couldn't have been at the penny slots or why it wasn't a million moments from now so she could see her 1st grandson born or why it was even her. But then I think again and can hear her speaking to me.....it's the big moments in life that teach us the lessons we will carry with us for a lifetime. She was one of my moments.
Not many of us can sit back and remember every conversation word for word, every place we went to and at what times, every meal we ate, and everything we watched on TV on one day over a week ago. What we do remember are the good and the bad moments that we made with the people we love and by ourselves. Truly at the end of our lives when we are gone from this earth that is what those who knew us will remember us for as well, the moments that we shared with them.
This is why it is important that you remember the profound effect you had on someone else's life. We need to hold on to the things we love, the things that have made us who we are, and who we never want to lose.
Listening to others speak about my friend and their memories of her, made that day so much more meaningful for her loved ones and friends. I am glad someone recorded it. Her grandchildren will love to listen to it one day to get to know the woman their grandmother was.
It gave me a closure that I needed. My friend was one in a million and gave me one in a million memories. I will never forget her.
We do not remember days, we remember moments.
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