At the end of 2012 we learned that a close relative had been diagnosed with cancer. A year later she passed away, a little over thirty years old.
We are still coming to terms with the distress of the final stages of her illness and that she is now gone, while trying to gain perspective by remembering her whole life.
She figures in many of my memory tags. I know exactly when certain events happened in the progression of her illness. I remember the special days we spent together both before and after her diagnosis.
This includes memory tags I have added retrospectively to the blanks on my mental calendar before I began this process of remembering every day that passes. We were together on 1 January 2011, the month when I begin the day-per-month reviews.
I was walking and speaking with her father soon after New Year this year and spoke to him about New Year three years before. We shared memories and stories. It was good to remember her, but there was a question that kept coming to mind, but was too painful to ask because it was no longer relevant: what were her plans?
When a life ends we have only the days lived to remember.
A phrase on cards and fridge magnets says that no-one is truly gone if they are remembered.
And so I am glad to have these memories and to come across them regularly following my refresh technique. Not just of this relative, but all the family and friends I share my life with.
We are still coming to terms with the distress of the final stages of her illness and that she is now gone, while trying to gain perspective by remembering her whole life.
She figures in many of my memory tags. I know exactly when certain events happened in the progression of her illness. I remember the special days we spent together both before and after her diagnosis.
This includes memory tags I have added retrospectively to the blanks on my mental calendar before I began this process of remembering every day that passes. We were together on 1 January 2011, the month when I begin the day-per-month reviews.
I was walking and speaking with her father soon after New Year this year and spoke to him about New Year three years before. We shared memories and stories. It was good to remember her, but there was a question that kept coming to mind, but was too painful to ask because it was no longer relevant: what were her plans?
When a life ends we have only the days lived to remember.
A phrase on cards and fridge magnets says that no-one is truly gone if they are remembered.
And so I am glad to have these memories and to come across them regularly following my refresh technique. Not just of this relative, but all the family and friends I share my life with.
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