Memories and Reminders

Day 25

Time spent together is not always going somewhere and doing things. Though, it is a way to make more memories and experience new things. It’s also memories and reminders.

There has been things here at my father’s house that bring back memories. My father’s late wife Linda passed away in 2021 on Christmas Day. It will always be a memory every years for me. But, for my father those memories are still throughout the house. It a daily reminder of memories that were once created. The house they shared for 20+ yr. is full of them. Shelves full of nik naks that she once treasured. It’s pictures of them with books she read or meant too to name a few.

Sometimes, a memory can be the impact of helping someone like my father, a young man and I did today. As we helped an older lady change her flat tire. I did my best to monitor traffic as my father started placing the jack under her car. Anyone who has used a car jack that comes with a vehicle knows it can be cumbersome and awkward to operate. My father’s knees are weak and kneeling on asphalt was not in his favor. So, I kneeled down to help him and started jacking up the car. Shortly after, another guy came up offering his help. Its the reminder a that there is still nice people in a world. A world still full of hatefulness, anger and fear. A world that many people are in a hurry and would normally pass by. It is the memory the lady will have that strangers helped her today.

I would like to quote another blogger I read named “Hazel”. She said “ I learned that helping one another makes the world a better place to live in…”

Though, I did not grow up in the house my father lives in. I still see small memories that my father has kept all this time of me. It’s the “stain glass” window hanging that I painted as a child. The picture given for Father’s Day of him and I.

Other times memories are how I recall seeing his Avon Station Wagon Woody Tai Winds Aftershave on his dresser. It now sits empty in a drawer. Or a picture of my grandparents in their younger days. That makes me wonder how life was for them at that time.

Now, it’s the coffee cups we have drink out of each morning as my husband Jacob and I have been visiting. The reminder of my father’s faith as his bible sits on the wooden chest downstairs. And the bumper sticker of his service in the Vietnam War.