By now we have all seen bleak photos from the fire zones in southern California. Thousands of homes, busi-nesses, churches and schools have been reduced to rubble.
Other places have been so badly damaged they may have to be pulled down. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.
Overall, scenes are similar to photographs from devas-tated cities in World War II, in Gaza and elsewhere around the world.
We have all seen the TV in-terviews the people who have lost everything. Many stand in front of what was their home having no idea what they will do next, where they’ll live, or whether to stay and rebuild or start over in a new location.
Everything is gone. Every-thing. Asked about their loss-es, nearly all say bravely, “The important thing is that we’re alive.”
Most will settle down to the hard work of rebuilding their homes. They will have to acquire new furnishings, clothes and everything else most of us need for daily living. But they’ll never get back the icons connecting them to their pasts.
We all have these tangible reminders in our homes and lives. Photo albums and pic-tures are irreplaceable. But there are other reminders of special times or special peo-ple.
For example, I have two lamps were given to me by people who were important. On the speaker, I have a c plastic black falcon, Horus, the Egyptian god of their kings Pat and I bought when we were in Egypt. It is a cheap trinket to anyone else, but for me, it is a reminder of the tremendous time we had visiting the country.
J.M. Barrie, the author of “Peter Pan,” wrote a short story titled “The Old Lady Shows her Medals” that be-came a stage play, then a movie. It’s a sad tale set in England near the end of World War I when an older widow invites a young soldier to her home for dinner. She wants his company and to show him her medals be-cause they’re important to her.
He reluctantly agrees, she produces several wine corks and tells him she treasures them because each one had a connection with a soldier who had died in the war. The corks were her way of remembering the men who died for their king and coun-try.
You could say or write the same thing about even the most mundane objects that sometimes get pushed to the back of a drawer or closet. Perhaps you have done that. More important icons are protected by taping a small note on the back side of them to let the recipient know they are important.
Maybe they will keep it; maybe not. But we take qui-et comfort knowing that we’ve done our duty to tell a story about them for a future generation or two.
We do it for a selfish yet hopeful reason: If our de-scendants see these items, perhaps they will make the connection with us and re-member us long after we are gone. It is our quest for at least temporary immortality.
Nearly all things will even-tually wear out o disappear, and we know it. That’s one reason I like a short scene from “Downton Abbey’ where Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes are talking about life and the advancing years.
He tells her, “The business of life is acquiring memories. In the end, it is all we have left.”
Having seen the news seg-ments on the fires in Califor-nia, the hurricane flooding in western North Carolina and countless other tragedies around the world, Mr. Car-son’s words linger in my mind.
I’ve started a series of an-nual photo albums I call “The Book of Pat.” They are pictorial histories of the year with lots of pictures of Pat with friends, at parties and events, and the most ordi-nary days.
Once in a while we go through a volume, remem-bering and laughing, then a little saddened when we see a picture of a friend who’s since passed away. It is our way of keeping memories alive.
In time we will both be gone and those albums will fall into the laps of her two adult sons and their families. They live away, and my hope is they will enjoy seeing some of the people and events in their mum’s life.
Some nights when I am out for a walk, or late before Mr. Sandman calls, I strive to recall people and events from the past and run the memory tapes through my mind. One memory leads to another and I feel more con-nected with the past.
All this, I know, is ultimate-ly futile. The icons we treas-ure today will eventually disappear. And so will mem-ories.
But for the time being, Mr. Carson was right: The busi-ness of life is acquiring memories.
