Wednesday, May 26, 2010

After it's all gone...

"Where are you from?"

"New Hampshire."

"Oh well, um, I'm sure there are plenty of lovely people there."

She bellowed and then mentioned "I made sure to tell her Sherman's Army was not the Northern army, he was from the midwest. We were more civilized than that. I knew how sensitive everyone was about the War."

She was over 90 and told me that story at least 7 times as we sat down over dinner. It didn't matter what we were talking about, as soon as the subject came back to Columbia, she replayed it, almost verbatim. It was her first day in a new city with her husband at her mother-in-law's bridge club.

The same smile, the same laugh. It was as if she was reliving it for the very first time.

I wonder what my stories will be. What memories are etched so deeply they outlast the atrophy and decay of my faculties.

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