Memories……

“Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly. How terribly strange to be seventy….Time it was and what a time it was. It was, a time of innocence, a time of confidences. Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph. Preserve your memories. They’re all that’s left you”. Simon and Garfunkel Bookends Theme

The Bookends album, one of my favorites, was recorded in 1968, my first year of college. It will always remind me of my twin sister Jill, as we would sing many of the songs together. Why do I wax nostalgic lately? Two events occurred within the past two weeks that inspired this blog post about memories.

I attended the gravesite funeral of a family friend who reached the age of 94 and I re-watched the movie “The Way We Were” with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford.

“The Way We Were” was released in 1973 and became a smash romantic drama with a grammy winning song of the same name. Seeing the movie again after so many years (omg, has it been 47 years) had me recalling “the way we were”, my life at that time as a 23 year old newly married woman with our beautiful newborn daughter Jamie.

My ex-husband George and I lived in a one bedroom apartment in Long Beach not far from the beach. My parents would come every weekend and we would go for long walks on the boardwalk with Jamie in the carriage. I loved the sound of the seagulls and the sea air, and remember afternoons sitting on the balcony with Jamie and feeling at peace.

As the first of my friends with a baby, I was nervous and unsure of myself as a mom. I was learning to cook at that time and was happy to have my mother close by for frequent phone calls and reassurance that I would not kill my husband if the chicken was a little undercooked. (George, on the other hand, would have been happier if we had lived by the Cross Island Parkway, so that my parents would not visit too often). It’s funny what you remember!

My sister Jill was single and living a totally different lifestyle. She was living in Harlem, studying for her Masters degree at Columbia Teacher’s College. She would take the train out to spend time with us when she was able. Such special memories….

In the movie, Hubbell and Katie (Redford and Streisand) decide to part after the birth of their daughter as she finally understood that he was not the man she idealized when she fell in love with him; she understood too that her husband would always choose the easy way out, whether cheating on the marriage or making drunken excuses for his behavior. Like Katie, at the beginning I had no inclination that I would be divorced at age 52 and have to start over and make a new life for myself.

By contrast, I know a couple who were married in their early twenties and stayed married for 72 years. This is the family friend I mentioned previously. She lost her beloved husband recently at age 92. (He was 94). The funeral was conducted at the gravesite by a woman cantor who had married their granddaughter a year before. The cantor gave a heartfelt sermon and sang beautiful melodies to celebrate our friend’s life. She admitted that she was surprised at the number of people in attendance and that it was a real tribute to the kind of man he was. Family members and friends told stories about the deceased, as a jokester, a songster and a man who loved to play the stock market.

Sharing tales of those we have lost is how we keep from really losing them. Recalling and sharing memories also helps us to connect with others and helps us find meaning in other life events and circumstances. Lois Lowry in “The Giver” says that the worst part of holding the memories is not the pain, but the loneliness of it and that memories need to be shared. I believe that is why I write my blog posts–I get joy in sharing my memories with all of you.

But do we have selective memory? Do our memories change as we age? According to Psychology Today, the answer is yes. Age changes our relationship with time. Our future shortens and our past grows heavier. As Charles Shulz the Peanuts cartoonist remarked, “once you’re over the hill, you begin to pick up speed.” Our past was experienced at a time when innumerable potentialities were open to us and now, looking back, they are frozen in time. There is a kind of magic in remembering that gives us a sense of the person we were at one time, with the context we did not have at the time. To advance we must acknowledge the evolution that has taken place in us over time. I am not the same person I was in 1973. If I was the person I am today, I don’t believe I would have stayed in the marriage for 32 years.

Why do we remember things the way we want to remember them sometimes? Mark Twain, in his autobiography wrote “the older I get, the better I was”. Psychology Today again has an answer. As years go by, memories from your past become more and more integrated into your sense of self and become part of the retelling of your life story. The “reality” may fade but their centrality to your sense of self continuously matures over time. Recalling less and less about painful events and more about happy ones may even help you adapt with life challenges you face as you get older.

“Memories may be beautiful and yet, what’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget. So it’s the laughter, we will remember. Whenever we remember, the way we were. The way we were.” Alan Bergman/Marilyn Bergman/Marvin Hamlisch XO Penny