When I was a child—maybe six or seven years old—Dan Gilbert, Richard Britt and I used to play a game that involved which sense or body part we would choose to lose if we had to lose one. The arguments would be energetic: if you lost your sight you couldn’t see to get around; if you lost your hearing, you wouldn’t know what was around you in the dark; if you lost your legs you couldn’t walk. We'd sit on the wall in front of Richard’s house and argue for what seems like hours.

And now that I’ve grown old, I know that our answers were wrong.

We didn’t even consider the most terrible thing to lose. It wasn’t because we were dumb, but because we were young, too young to know their real value.

The most terrible thing to lose would be our memories, what has happened to get us to where we are.

I woke up early this morning and began paging through my memories. There are a lot of them, involving a small world of people, many of whom are no longer with us except as memories. That’s the problem with getting very old, so many people who are important to us are no longer here.

But, as sad as that thought may be, the memories are not sad. Some of them recall actions more laudable than others, but they are the building blocks of a long life.

I remember, for instance, the first time Linda and I went out. I can retrace the steps we took on that short walk. And I can locate the spot where we sat beside the street. It was an early marker in my life.

I remember sitting in the front row in the front seat in algebra, because Judson Stephens would always begin on one side of the room or the other. If you got that seat, you only had to be able to work the first problem or one of the last few. You could ignore the middle ones.

I remember my mother climbing a pecan tree to help me get down. I could do “up” at that age, but I hadn’t mastered “down.”

I can remember the library in Benson, walking slowly along the line of books looking for one more to read. For some reason, the book that sticks out in that memory is Ivanhoe.

I can remember watching my dad and his brothers play baseball for the Benson Bulls. The Holmes boys made up nearly half of the town’s ball team, and I don’t think I ever saw dad any happier than when he was playing baseball. Watching those games was something I did every summer on Wednesdays and Sundays for almost all my childhood.

There are memories that are much nicer than the original experience, such as trying to assemble Chuck’s Lost in Space space station, or Les’ Barbie Townhouse on Christmas eve and Christmas morning. In both cases, those memories contain significant elements of both frustration and failure.  

There are, of course, some sad memories. Like being paged at the airport to be told that dad had died. Or sitting at my mother’s funeral wishing the preacher had known more and said more.

But the sad memories, the happy memories, the memories of success, the memories of failure—they’re all part of the package, and I’m grateful for all of them. Back in my younger, more Romantic days, there was a quote from The Prophet that I often repeated to myself: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

Back then, I was trying to convince myself that I was some sort of tragic hero in my own life. It was, like the game I played with Dan and Richard, a childish thing, not so dumb as uninformed. Now I know that happy and sad, success and failure are all to be remembered because they are all threads from which our lives are woven.

I have friends who have had to deal with loved ones who had lost their memories, who could no longer connect. And it’s the part of old age that terrifies me most.

But, for now, I have my memories and I can sit in my chair and run them through the theatre that’s in my head. And I’m thankful.

If you are wondering what is causing such wandering around in the dusty attic full of long-gone happenings, it’s fairly easy to explain. It’s my birthday, one that is many numbers higher than I expected to achieve, and it’s significant enough to cause reflection. Reflecting on my memories is a good deal more comforting than reflecting on the applicable meanings of superannuation, which is another thing I fear.