This I Believe

Memory: the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving fact or

events; recalling or recognizing previous experiences. From the time we

rise up in the morning until we lay down at night our whole day is

comprised of memories in the making, whether we realize it or not. When we

recall all these stored up snap shots of our lives sometimes we can’t

fathom why something went the way it did. Though in the moment we might

not immediately understand why something occurred memory allows us to

reflect back and make the connections necessary to understand at a later

time.

When I was 14 years old a tragic event shook the foundation that my life

was built upon. I remember it vividly- I was strolling home from school so

excited to share a good test score with my mother, but when I entered the

front door the smile was quickly wiped from my face. “Kara, I need to tell

you something,” my mom said with the expression of pain upon her eyes and

face, “I went to the hospital today and …” She didn’t have to say another

word. Tears streamed down my face, I knew what she was going to tell me

and I didn’t want to hear it. “The baby didn’t make it Kara, it’s gone.”

That moment of feeling alone and hurt has stayed with me since, but I have

now been able to come to terms with life’s plan for my family; we later

found out that had the baby grown to full term it would have had many

complications and probably would not have survived. In a way it saved us a lot of heartbreak and ultimately it actually brought us closer then we’d ever been before.

More recently, I found out that my grandma has pancreatic cancer and, once again, I am going to be forced to find a purpose for why this is

occurring. I never really had a relationship with this grandma; she’s

always lived so far away and keeping in contact was always difficult, that

is until the cancer struck. In a way this cancer has been the best thing in the entire world, not in the sense that it is a fatal disease, but in the sense that it has brought my grandma and me together in a way that would have probably been impossible without the cancer. Though I know the end is possibly near, at least now I will have memories to look back on once Heaven calls her home and will know that we had a relationship that will last my entire life.

Our memories are powerful because they let us evaluate ourselves, learn

from our past experiences, and make changes that will benefit us in the long run- and while life sometimes deals us the crappiest hands in the entire world, I still find myself believing that everything happens for a reason, though we may not see it at the time.