Leaving a trace (revisited)

Note: Here is an entry from November 1, 2006 that I posted at Open Diary. I have re-read it twice now, and also the very thoughtful notes and comments, and I think I have finally decided what to do in answer to the questions I posed. But I’d like your opinion. I feel sure you have thought of this about your own past.

The past is so complicated for me. I am forever trying to idealize the past and remember the “golden ages” from it as I ponder the distinct passages in my life. Not surprisingly for someone like me, those passages are mostly related to, and based on, the various jobs and careers I’ve had. Also, since I’ve retired, I have more time theoretically to think about the past. Some people say “forget the past and concentrate on the present,” but I have only limited success doing that. The bad things in the past stick with me much more vividly, as all traumatic events do, and I fairly often have flashbacks and a version of post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). Two of the worst of those recurring flashbacks happened in small towns during my newspaper career.

As for the happy memories from the past, there are many but by far the happiest time was confined to a four year period from 1979 through the Spring of 1983. After that, aside from long solo car trips around the country in search of new sights and sensations, it was downhill for years, job and career wise. I learned a lot and spent a lot of time doing graduate work, but I was seemingly permanently uprooted. A new life and a new career opened for me in late 1994 after ten years of struggle and wandering, and it was from that job and career that I retired last year.)

Leaving a Trace, Nov. 1, 2006

The other week, instead of going home at 5, I stayed at my desk and computer thinking about some of the jobs I’ve had over the years, googling the names of various newspapers and organizations I have been a part of, seeing what came up, and pondering a dilemma I have been trying to solve for some time now. More on that shortly.

I seem to do this a good bit now that I am getting nearer retirement age – recalling in quiet moments the jobs I have held and the people I have come to know at those jobs. This takes on added significance for me because I don’t have a family of my own, and, for better or worse, the people I have worked with became, in a sense, surrogate families. I developed, as a consequence of this, some very strong bonds and friendships with co-workers, and I still do to this day in my present job. Additionally, as I get older and I realize my life has definitely crossed the threshold of middle age and, unbelievably, is entering final stage of life, I tend to re-assess the good and bad of of those jobs, the towns I lived in, and the employers I had.

Not having had many close friends outside of work, my jobs have always taken on a very important role in my life. Just as a diary or journal is a record of one’s life and thoughts at particular moments in time, so, too, the accomplishments on the job are a record of a period of time.

For years, my jobs entailed reporting, writing and editing at small community newspapers. I accumulated a considerable body of published writing and photography, but unfortunately it all seems irretrievable since I didn’t save most of my clippings and writings from those days. There are folders of clippings in boxes in the closet, but it’s not like being able to see the entire newspaper. The only way to do that would be to go to the libraries and historical societies in those towns and view the newspapers in bound volumes or on microfilm.

Here’s the hard part. While the majority of my experiences in two of the towns was positive and life enhancing, I also experienced events in both places that left lasting scars emotionally. Suffice it to say, the memories are powerful enough so that after many years, I still have not been back to revisit and look at those old issues of the newspapers I worked so hard on or to even drive around and reminisce and look at old, familiar landmarks. It’s not as if I lived in either place long. Only about a year and a half in each.

As the years continue to pass, however, I think about how I can get additional closure on those events from the past while avoiding the unnecessary dredging up of old, bad memories. A part of my life was invested in those towns and the question I pose is, Do I need to try to further overcome my reluctance to revisit the past when so much that transpired in those places was good and positive, or do I just let it be, leave well enough alone and rely just on the memories I have? Or, I might put it this way: How much is gained by physically returning to the places we inhabited in our pasts? What is the real purpose? I am not sure I will or can do this. I have not been back to my home town of New Orleans for more than 14 years [now 26 years as of 2018], and after the events that transpired after Hurricane Katrina, truly don’t know if I even will. [The city has come back. I definitely will when I can]. I just wonder if returning to the places where we once lived is actually a healthy act of catharsis, renewal and strengthening of ourselves emotionally, or a painfully self-inflicted wound.