​DEATH OF A MOMENT

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.  ​

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.  Theodor Geisel
 
I think it is pretty much impossible to live for the moment.  I know that a lot of people offer that advice, especially after a tragedy, but my own experience tells me that the emotions and sensations of the moment are fleeting to the point that they are lost almost as soon as they are found.  It is the context of those moments, sort of the puff pastry that surrounds them, that gives them meaning.
 
On a summer night many years ago, in my wonderful childhood neighborhood, a bunch of us had gathered, parents and kids, in front of my family home. We had a basketball hoop over the garage and fathers and sons were shooting. (Yes, just the males of the species. It was about 1966.) The weather was perfect. The company more so. It began to get dusky, and I popped into our kitchen to get something to drink, and I remember saying out loud, “Please God, don’t let this night ever end.” It did.
 
Years later, I had the privilege of officiating at the wedding of one of the kids who had lived next door to me. Of course, he wasn’t a kid by then, and neither was I. I told the story of that evening, and suddenly it was there again. It may be that the neighbors in attendance did not remember it, and it is a certainty that the guests who were not there had never heard of it. But everyone smiled. Everyone was transported back to one perfect night, or afternoon, or weekend. At the heart of that experience was the core moment when, consciously or not, they each said, “Please God, don’t let it ever end.”
 
There will come a time when I lose that memory. Maybe it will be crowded out by other perfect moments when I no longer am the kid but rather the dad or the grandpa. Maybe the wealth of experiences of the two generations since that evening will bury it under a pile of moments to sort out, and I will just be too tired.  Maybe, God forbid, I will lose the capacity to retrieve my memories. And, of course, eventually I will die, taking my memories with me into eternal silence. But until that moment, the puff pastry will remain remarkably fresh, as it has for close to sixty years.
 
The author of the quotation is better known as Dr. Seuss. He has created more earworms than many, transforming moments like bedtime and reading circles into memories provoked by a lifetime of reminders (“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant…”). His observation that the value of a moment may only be in memory is likely more frequent than the impression he gives. As I began, the emotions and sensations of the moment are fleeting. Fortunately, few moments have the immediate power of 9/11/2001 or the Cubs finally winning the World Series (sorry Cleveland). I don’t think we have the capacity to live lives that make the demands of those moments on a regular basis. We need normal and forgettable, whatever that is for any one or group of us.
 
My mother used to tell me that when I was a toddler, I would stand by the front window of our apartment and cry inconsolably when my father went to work every morning. I have no recollection of it, yet I can picture the scene in my mind from her telling and my faint remembrance of that picture window. It is almost as clear as my memory of that perfect evening in June. At some point, in some way, the value of those moments was entrusted to memory long after the death of the moments themselves.
 
At our Passover seder this year, we discussed memory. My friend the neurologist agreed to let me interview him about how memory forms, why some things stick and others do not, and whether we can create memories of things we never experienced. (BTW, the answer to the last one is yes, and that is what the telling of the stories of the Exodus is all about.)
 
The collective memory of those individual moments can inform religion, culture, and identity. No one alive today was present at the Exodus, the Resurrection, or the ascent to heaven of the Prophet. Yet every adherent has a memory of the event “as if.”  The rockets’ red glare, four score and seven, the day that will live in infamy – they are moments preserved after being long gone.
 
If memory preserves moment, then we are rightfully afraid of losing our memories. They do more than remind us. They ground us They make it possible to know the value of a moment long after the moment has passed. Maybe that’s why we all hope to be remembered for a blessing.