What if a time comes when I am unable to remember your face, your eyes, your smile, the first touch, our conversations? What if there remains only a void next to your name? What if time covers up all the nuances, all the idiosyncrasies? What if I am unable to recall all that I cherish right now?

Haven’t so many memories already got lost? There have been times, when I have tried to recall, put all the features together but the picture remains hazy, when I have tried to reconstruct the conversations but I keep losing the thread, when I have tried to relive the feelings of the moment but am left with only the pain, waste and futility, which were the final outcome.

Every once in a while, I visit a place in my mind, which has my cherished memories – of school, of friends and teachers, of playgrounds and basketball courts, of my home and family, of first kiss and heart break, of faces laughing with such abandon that they make me smile even now, as I recall them.

Those were heedless years, when letting go, age and death were not considered. Life was too full of laughter, drama, routine and security that came with it. Each step was towards freedom and world was a place to be explored for its various treasures and life was promising to be exciting and fun, without a care or burden. It did not occur that life will change, that those times needed to be consolidated into memories. I wish I had observed more carefully, I wish I had felt more intensely, I wish I had actively created more memories, instead of, just repeating the remnants of experiences now in my mind.

In another dimension, I look at my sons and wonder if, when they are all grown up, will I remember their baby smell, will I remember the first time I looked at them, the first time they looked at me, the first time I held them both, the gratitude and thankfulness that I felt, the first hug, the first steps?  Will I remember how they walk around with a bat tucked for a sword, in their shirt? Will I remember their warm kisses in the morning and how they hug me to sleep? Will I remember their attempt to converse like adults? Will I remember their conspiratory giggles as they finalize their plan of mischief? And will I remember their faces when they are caught red-handed? Will I remember their belly laugh on seeing the snow or the river or the huge mountains, for the first time?

I wonder if time will continue to, impersonally and with merciless efficiency, shroud everything with  darkness? Or does motherhood come with its own memory capacity which remains untouched by time?

Even though there is nothing that we can hold onto, even though we journey alone, even though nothing remains constant, yet I want to hold onto these memories for a lifetime. I want to create memories to relive them again and again, because memories are all we will be left with…..memories that define our time here, that make us who we are and define what road of evolution we did take…..what we were and what we became. I visit each treasured moment and tuck it in my mind, make it a memory to revisit again, some day. To live innocence, joy, hope, love and friendship of a lifetime, once again.