Memories; The Hall of Life

I was listening to the words of a song by The Hoppers, an amazing Southern Gospel family I have loved since the early 1970s.  When the song was over, the mother, Connie Hopper, spoke and in her words said life is a set of memories. That brief comment began a mental drilling down for me in realizing just how profound that is for life, truly, is about memories.  Singing at a funeral yesterday for a man younger than me that passed very suddenly just a few days before, I spoke about this very reality as the upload to me singing the great song, Celebrate Me Home.  See the distraught wife, the shell shocked sons and five beautiful grandchildren that just really had not had time to process it all, that scene reinforced the immeasurable power of memories.

 

At sixty-seven years old, my account of memories is staggering with many being good, some simply amazing, some still frightening, still some warms me all over.  Memories of people that have touched my life and my heart along the journey come to me at interesting time such as at funerals or weddings. Events tend to trigger memories don't they? One that stands out to me is in a bitterly hot Alabama summer standing in a small graveyard for a belated funeral of my great grandfather who had fought at Gettysburg for the South. In that same graveyard was a memory etched into my hard drive was a KKK funeral for a distant relative when I was about six years old. I did not understand any of it but I knew the robes and strange hats were abundant. But this time I was asked to sing Precious Memories at the gravestone for it was one of my mother's favorite songs which I later sang at her funeral at her request.  The fact that I started the song out in a key I could not sustain for it was too high is one of the painful memories of that moment but being surrounded by relatives, many of which have now left us for Heaven, was, well, very special and I knew my efforts pleased my mother; a Wonderful Memory.

 

So many enter and exit our lives and some so quickly we do not relish the time nor the touch that person made on our portrait.  Coach Walter Holt, Coach Riley Whitaker, Joe Stone, Earl Hicks, Ruth Epley, Zeddie Morton, my grand father Williams, Alicia Williams and the list begins to wind endlessly through the canals of my mind. Life is, very much, about the shades, shadows and hues of memories.  Losing friends too young, working through hard, tough, complex issues with people you have to rely on, making decisions on discharging people from jobs knowing they need it but have proven themselves unreliable or unworthy scar you for years. 

 

At this stage of my life, the nearly 7,000 students I was honored to teach and thus to touch their lives has made an indelible mark on my life and I believe on many of their lives.  Singing has become the defining place for me at this stage of my life that still staggers my mind wonderfully. but singing to many hundreds of a wide array of people each year is a blessing I could never have imagined I would get to do and to enjoy so very much. I know my time with these wonderful people is my touching their lives; that is the true blessing for me in getting to be an instrument via music to touch hearts. WOW!

 

Relationships are central and core to the memories that create the pathway of life for it is the interface with others both good and not so good that bring the color to HD in replaying the avenues and boulevards of our life.  Watching the photo display at the funeral yesterday deeply reinforced this reality for life does truly move along oh so quickly; so quickly we do not realize it at the time at the etchings on our lives.

 

In closing, I propose each of you reading this take a few moments and take a trip down your interstate of life. Think about people that adjusted your trajectory and arc and thank God for them even though the memory made evoke pain and regret; still the touch made a difference. I realize how unbelievably blessed I am and realized all over again just how quickly this journey of life can end so quickly and unexpectedly which is what was so evident yesterday. For each of you that read this, please know that if you have entered my life at any point, you made a difference for I am here, now, where I am and while happy, I know the best is yet to come!