MEMORIES COME TO CALL

     I'm not sure if it's possible to completely let go of the past, or whether it would even be healthy if we could. It waits for us in the strangest of places, and comes forth out of nowhere; unexpected, and for the most part, unwanted. The memory of events lives on in time somehow the way wrinkles remain on the surface of a bedspread where we have rested. And we see them and feel them as if they did not happen years and years ago, or even last week, but as if they are happening right now. A song or a scent can trip a memory, and feelings from another time and place surge forth and flood us in the present moment.
     I'm not sure what we are supposed to do with them when they come- simply acknowledge awareness of them? Or feel their imprint on us like a remembered conversation? Or are we meant to somehow shut them down and send them packing? You are old news. You are no longer real, no longer valid, no longer wanted- be on your way. But like ghosts that cannot rest because they have unfinished business, perhaps our haunting memories come back to teach us what we have to know. And perhaps we are meant to welcome them and invite them in and pull up a chair to listen.
     All I know for sure is that, unsuspecting as I may be, certain memories rise up and demand to be felt. So I am willing to feel them, and hope, in the feeling, that a new level of peace can be integrated and that old hurts may be laid to rest at last.

I am open to the ways that physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual memories may have a purpose and a place in the present day, even if I cannot exactly understand what the purpose is. I welcome them and am curious to learn whatever they have to teach me.