The Healing Meadows of MEMORY

REMEMBRANCES ARE THE SEEDS OF THE PAST, READY TO SPRING INTO INSTANT AND BENEFICIAL BLOOM

- BY Jack Denton Scott

Our home was a lovely, private place, encircled by forests.

The huge meadow in front was a favourite meeting ground for wildlife—everything from deer to fox cubs. Then suddenly, after 17 years, our lease was not renewed, and we had to move.

We thought we'd mourn forever. But one day my wife asked me, “Remember that time we saw a deer deliver twin fawns in the meadow?”

And I added, “Remember those skunks dancing in the moonlight?”

Without any plan, that became our magic meadow of memories. Recalling those scenes made us appreciate the opportunity we'd had to witness them, providing us with a sure way to defeat our despair over our loss. We discovered the truth that Cicero had written: “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”

Those accessible meadows that all of us store in the amazing repository called the memory can even help us cope with problems. My wife and I learnt a trouble-lifting technique from a friend who used memories to make his twice-weekly dialysis bearable. His doctor had advised: “Take a memory break. It’s like a coffee break that brings peace of the mind.”

So our friend would close his eyes during his treatment and once again walk the streets of Paris with the mists of a spring rain in his hair. He would gleefully rediscover a valuable antique in a shop, the object’s shop not realized by the shopkeeper. He’d hear again the opera Aida, its soaring music carrying him away from the antiseptic hospital room.