Mementos of the Past
The first time I remember confronting death was as a child. My mother took me to visit my paternal grandmother and grandfather in a Los Angeles suburb. It was the kind of place that the original boom California generation moved to as a relief for what central Los Angeles had become. I was twelve years old and my memories of my grandfather were limited as we had moved north to Alaska when I was two years old. I had only seen him a couple of times since then and those memories were clouded in the fog of early youth. Memories colored by photographs that likely don’t recall but simply recreate a memory that had left the mind or been buried within its deep recesses. My grandfather was debilitated. He sat in his naugahyde recliner with a blanket wrapped around him watching reruns of Bonanza and Big Valley. He was suffering from brain cancer and his time was limited but when you are young, and have no concept of death, time seems to have little finality. For a young mind, Gra