memories are different than stuff

I've always been somewhat obsessed with memories. I used to keep a memory box with pieces of books I started in the sixth grade, newspaper clippings, and just odds and ends. Kind of like Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird" but I had no Boo on the other side. And I was probably never that precocious or brave.

I know a woman who, in the past few years, suffered a very difficult loss. Her longtime partner passed away after a painful battle with cancer. They had built a life and routines around each other as comes with any commitment. And then, he was gone. Not unexpectedly, but painfully. And, I think, an uncertain world unfolded before her. At least that's what I imagine.

Not long after this happened, we were meeting in her space. I noticed that on her wall was a mirage of postcards, all of them very particular and lovely. I asked her about them, and she said she had picked them up with her boyfriend throughout their travels together. And that she looked at them to remember all of the wonderful places there were in the world to explore, and how many things she had seen. It was her pick-me-up. At the time, it seemed like such an obvious thing to do to "spruce up" an office. I thought--and think I even said--that I would make sure to buy a postcard during all my travels yet to come, and I would create a wall of my own that I could admire when I needed to. Making memories when I really needed them, in place of sunshine, beers outside at noon, and trains taken through landscapes that looked like Wisconsin, but were much further away.

We have traveled to Europe, Thailand, and New York since then. And at each place, as I promised I would, I bought a postcard, and have begun to create my own wall of memories. Yet, somehow, it has never done anything for me. It doesn't take me away. They're just nice pictures that I got somewhere else, and now they're here. Taking up a spot on my wall, but not opening a door to anything interesting.

The stories I have from those adventures are ones I share every day with my own partner in crime. And we talk a lot about the memories we have yet to make, the wines we have yet to taste, and scooters we have yet to crash. We're forever admiring the consistency of our life together, and making plans for life tomorrow. We take for granted the time we have, reminding ourselves that life is precious but never treating it as precious as we might if we thought it were fleeting.

This woman I know. I think maybe those postcards mean something more to her than mine do to me. Maybe a memory of something much greater than a place or a site. That makes her wall of postcards more beautiful than I could possibly imagine or hope to recreate. Nothing I own means that much to me. Nothing can compare to the gift of having time to make plans. And break them. I could live in an empty room forever, un-spruced. And instead, we'll open the door to the outside for as long as we are able.