Living in the past

08-05-19

I live too much in the past, nostalgic for a time I found pain when I lived it, now far more innocent than time we pass through these days.

some joker on the intern posed an impossible choice between going back to 45 with $10 million or going back to my youth knowing all I know now.

I'd skip the $10 million for the chance to see old friends and family again.

perhaps to meet even family I didn't get to know enough when I met them only in passing.

delving into their lives in retrospect I realize just how much I missed or have forgotten or never knew and only by going back will I truly know them.

Everybody's youth seems more innocent than it actually is. My grandparents, my great grandparents even my great great grandparents each saw their worlds change and become more complex. Each saw the passing of family the way I have to become as my grandmother became and I have become, a sole survivor, burdened with my memories and the memories who came before me, knowing but not well enough my ancestors. but I have only bits and pieces to represent the whole, snapshots in time with which to preserve them.

if I could go back, knowing what I know now, I would know what to look fir, how to fill in all these missing pieces of all those people I have come to cherish through time.