A Day in the Life of Chaos

As you age it becomes increasingly difficult to segregate moments of time.   Our memories can recall events yet trying to reconcile the event with age can be problematic at best.   I find that if I start with an event I can build a recollection however, if I was to start with an age, say what happened to me when I was 8 years old, it is nearly impossible to construct.   There are times when I attempt to torture my mind by trying to rebuild a picture of not only an instant but everything that was around me.   Often times our only recollections are programmed around photographs that remind us and often reconstruct moments long forgotten.   When does this happen in life?  How old are we when our minds transition to a point of fogginess with incidental clarity?  I have recently taken interest in period television that reconstructs the past.  My past.  I drift away from the story to analyze the environments and try to recall if it was the same as I remembered.  Sometimes when I watch a pe

Last Monday a woman in my office wasn't at her desk when I arrived in the morning.  The day progressed and periodically I checked for her, yet was never able to find her.  Finally I asked a secretary if she knew if Beth would be in at all.  I was told she was out because on Sunday, Beth lost her house.  Over the weekend a bad storm had passed through the area and along with creating a tornado, knocked down some trees.  Especially hard hit was Lake Murray, an area near Columbia where Beth had a summer vacation home.  When I heard the news and verified that Beth and family were okay my mind immediately clicked.  It was as if some kind of primal fight or flight instinct kicked in and I opined, "I wonder if the storm was made worse by the lake?" At first the seemingly innocuous nature of the question didn't bother me until I sat down and thought about it with more contemplation and depth.   What I had done was a process that the vast majority of us are guilty of on a

Last night I dreamed of my mother. Of course we all dream of our mothers yet mine has been dead now for eleven years. It was one of those dreams where she seemed so real. I could speak to her and for a few hours or maybe minutes, I felt like she was still alive. I wonder if dreams are a gift or a torture. Do they help us remember or resolve conflicts in our mind? When my mother passed away from cancer I had so many mixed feelings. So many unresolved issues that could never be resolved. Yet some how, in the face of loss, the issues didn't seem so important anymore. If I could give anyone advice that has a parent still living it would be to find a way to set aside the anger. Your chance to know a person you have taken for granted for most of your life is so fleeting, don't waste it. Don't let it escape your grasp. Unfortunately we are all likely to repeat the same mistakes. It seems that so often the qualities that we love and admire about a person are not