Memories.....Do Somethin' in The Corners of My Mind

Most of what we are today is fashioned by what we remember from yesterday. We set our tables a certain way because that's how we were trained to do it as children. We brush our teeth and clean our homes a certain way and eat certain foods because that's what we have been doing 'since we were kids'. Well, what if you can't remember how it was when you were a kid? What if that part of your life is gone from your memory? What would you do to get it back? Would you want it back? All of it....the good and the bad?

When Grover was 12, he was in an accident. He was at a young girl's house, friend of his, with a couple of other friends. Now this young lady's dad was the sherrif and her brother was a sherrif's deputy. She decides to show Grover and the others her brother's gun. It was a .22 LR (longrifle). About the time she brings the gun into the room, Grover (who is a Boy Scout at the time) tells her "you might want to put that up before you hurt someone". No sooner than those words are out of his mouth, the gun accidentally goes off. Grover is shot in the chest from two feet away with with this .22 LR which is loaded with hollow points. The young girl's mother (who is an RN) hears the gunshot, runs into the room, has someone call and ambulance and proceeds with CPR.

At the hospital, the doctors do not expect Grover to make it. They have him in surgery, where he dies. He remains clinically dead for 18 minutes. That's no pulse, no pressure....nothing for 18 minutes. That's a long time...a very long time ...to be dead. How he manages to come back is anyone's guess. His heart just started beating again. After this, of course, they didn't expect him to remain alive for very long after the surgery. So they just patched him up and went on.

He was not supposed to make it. Having made it, he was never supposed to be able to walk, talk, eat, think or breathe on his own. But he did. He did that and more. He taught himself to walk again, to talk again and eveything else. Just because he wasn't supposed to be able to. Because he's hardheaded like that;). But there is one thing that he has not been able to do. He can't remember. Anything from the first 12 years of his life. Occasionally he will have flashes of something but nothing that can be qualified as an actual memory. This has been more than a little frustrating for him. Especially now that he has children of his own and he would like to share stories from his childhood with them, except he can't remember any of his childhood to share.

I have trained myself to be more careful of the 'when I was a kid' stories around him, not that he has ever said anything about it but because I don't want him to be uncomfortable hearing them.

He wants to remember but he doesn't know how. It's a hard road to walk but he does it the same way he does everything else....with sheer determination and force of will. I have to give him credit because I don't know if I could do the same thing if it were me. To have to start your life all over again, with no reference points for the simple things. But he's done a fabulous job. And maybe when he's in his twilight years, he can take the life he's living now and be able to say "I remember when" with the rest of us. Somehow, that seems to be shallow comfort but it's what he has for now.

Peace allll ..........