They come to me as I am falling asleep
Or when I am reading someone's story
Or in odd moments having associations
Remembering people and places
A lifetime of experiences comes back
As discrete interactions and feelings
Jumbled bits carried into my thoughts
Conjured into an ephemeral existence
Too transient to describe in detail
Too many to arrange in a sequential story
Wandering through this memory palace
Finding stored pieces of my former self
I hope to not ever forget any of it
Brought to mind to keep it from fading
When I was very young and much older
Living through so many changes
I think this is what any of us ends up with
If we survive to see wrinkles in the mirror
Perhaps marking the accumulation of wisdom
Contemplating all that we have been through
Looking back connects the past to the present
To understand our evolving individual identity
To know what makes us us as we are now
To appreciate all the more what we have today
