The greatest gift one can give is that of truly devoted listening.  I find that to be true in all facets of my life, but especially so with the very young and the very old.

Tim and I recently visited his 102 year old grandmother in her nursing home in Des Moines.  We spent the first twenty minutes trying to engage her in group conversation that I am sure was gibberish.  She doesn't remember anyone from her current life because in her mind she is a twelve year old girl walking her horse, Bonnie, to her piano lessons in the grand old year of 1920.  As the family spoke, she grew more and more agitated and those around her grew more and more desperate for her to remember.  One memory.  One mention of Steve or Patty or Tim or Char or a singular name that would indicate she was truly with us, that she truly understood who we are and the year in which she's living.  It's a gift every family in every crappy Lifetime movie is given, that one last moment with a loved one in which they bust out every person's name with a vivid flash of life and everyone hugs and then the person dies but all are vindicated by the return of Memory.  Good old Memory.  The thing which ties us to this life, to this person, to who we perceive ourselves and our families to be.

When in actuality, we are much more than memory.  Memory is just a thing, a recollection of things which have happened.  At our essence, I imagine memory does not factor in a single bit.  Except, of course, that it can shape our ability to be courageous or fearful based on previous success or failure.  But when it is gone, we still exist.  We do not cease to be, I don't believe, simply because the context of history has disappeared.

So after a half hour of feeling fearful of overstepping boundaries, I sat next to Cleyla and we had quite a raucous conversation.  Out of pearly, glaucoma-ridden eyes she and I planned a party in which she would wear red and I would wear blue and we would bring a picnic basket.  Tim, we decided, could attend if he continued to be good, but the others would all be joyfully welcomed.  We had already finished the ham and Mom was finishing up the potatoes and we thought the best place might be down by the river, next to the old scraggly oak that tipped at such a precarious angle we were certain one day it would wash downstream.  In moments of worry, Cleyla would wonder if we were chatting too long, if she had missed dinner.  When I assured her Mom would certainly save her some, we continued planning, talking about the Christmas gifts we would buy the ghosts of a past only she recalled.

And so I found sitting in that room that as memory evades us, we do not cease to be at all.  We can still be storytellers and feel the joy of Christmas and the sweetness of fudge on our lips.  We can smile and laugh and be joyous, even if most of who we perceived ourselves to be has disappeared.  Although the lack of memory is a painful, debilitating fact to those who loved her most and knew her when she still "had her mind," I found our interaction to be meaningful and love-filled.  I found parts of myself in her and, deep in the secret recesses of my heart, wished we could throw that party together.  We told a good story, one so compelling I am certain we nearly dreamed it into existence.

The greatest gift we can give, indeed, is love.  Love not tied to the dreadful weight of memory.  Love not obstructed by our own wish for someone to be different than who they are.  Love fully entangled with a deep commitment to listen deeply and, especially, with the heart.

Accidental Babies

I love the song "Accidental Babies" more than is probably healthy.  It's an atrocious song, right?  Filled with regret and wish and the acknowledgment that life moves on, that we move on, and that some things can never be the same even if they seemed so desperately right in the moment.  Love between two people doesn't seem to follow rules.  Life happens and gets terribly in the way.  One is immature.  Or one feels a desperate yearning for something that turns out to be a shallow, misunderstood desire. Or one finds another love only to realize the first was, indeed, the superior.  Is this, then, a part of the path we walk?  Unfulfilled, unrealized, almost somethings between friends or strangers or roommates or old loves?

"Does he drive you wild, or just mildly free?'

How many people, do you think, end up with someone who drives them wild?  How many people are lucky enough to do forever with someone who makes them feel so alive?

Is it healthy, even, to maintain that pace?

I had a teacher in high school who maintained that the most boring man you meet, the one who absolutely drives you to tears with his unexcitability is the one you should marry.  She insisted, in fact, that he would be the stable father/husband figure about which every woman dreams.  No wild, passionate break up notes followed shortly by desperate reconciliations.  No letters of poetry insisting life without the other is equivalent to a death.  Nothing exotic or crazy or world altering.  Just a constant, stable love.  A dinner on the table, a consistent income, and a father who would desperately love children.

What do I do with the almost-had moments of my life?  Do I put them on the shelf and dust them off from time to time and reminisce about what those days were like or do I, in a moment of absolute insanity, pursue them?  Do I write an illicit letter in the dark, secretly relaying feelings I thought I had put to bed?  Or do I forget them?  Forget them forever.  Bury them deeply. Pursue my automaton lifestyle in which I do not think too deeply or too long upon anything that troubles me, upon the imaginings that sneak up when I am close to sleep, or in the moment I make eye contact, across the room, with someone who used to mean so desperately much to me.

I like this song, I think, because none of us is without regret.  Because life would not be without opportunities missed.  The point, I suppose, is to think about those moments in which you felt so god damned alive and to relish them for existing, while whole heartedly appreciating precisely where you are and precisely what you have.  I'm not talking about putting blinders on and trudging on if life is awful.  But in the case that you have found another who drives you wild (and not mildly free) and is bold enough to take you on, then I suppose you should relish that person.  And, perhaps, have accidental babies with him.

Maybe the real lesson here is simply to have Accidental Babies.  Does that seem like a good plan?