Are they just memories of the past or is it actually “living in the past?”

There’s a big difference between “living in the past” and reflecting often on memories from that same past. This is what people (I’m especially thinking of one of my siblings) often view my life in the present as — that I can’t seem to get out of the past. Whereas I am constantly referring to people, places and events from the past, my brother never, ever goes back to his past unless I annoyingly press him about something he might or might not remember from our childhood, adolescence or adulthood. He just doesn’t want to think about it or talk about it. He doesn’t rather obsessively save old papers and essays from high school and college, letters, photos, knick knacks and countless items of what I term “memorabilia.” I treasure those small, seemingly insignificant artifacts of place and time for one simple fact: my memory is not as good as it once was, and these many objects/artifacts of my personal history, stored in every kind of file box and container imaginable, become the innumerable little launchpads into the deep inner space of my past, going back many decades. Looking at them, holding them, skimming or perusing some of the countless documents, books I’ve held onto for decades — all of these things can jolt me back in time instantly. In essence, for me at least, Artifacts”R”Us.

Whenever I make the effort to recapture the past through saved physical objects of any kind, I am literally not merely re-living the past, I am my past. If my brain can’t remember or call up on demand all I’ve said or done and experienced, then my precious memorabilia can certainly facilitate that. For instance, one day when I am gone others can know me or remember me through my abundant writings/journals/diaries and essays that I have written, especially during the last 25 years of regularly keeping an online journal or blog. I also wrote for newspapers for years, so I have a lot of clippings of those articles and I feel sure at least a few of the readers of those stories from decades ago probably still have some of them saved in scrapbooks or attics, if they haven’t been long-ago discarded.

The cumulative experience of thinking about the past — good and bad — as frequently as I have been doing lately, is because for months now i have been cleaning out closets of the family home in preparation for the long-dreaded sale of our house, my home for so many years while I was twking care of my mother.

The fact is, for me getting old means, factually, my life is fast nearing it’s end. How can I not possibly think about and review the past, or “live in the past,” especially when I have so many tangible reminders of it that reveal it to me in minute detail.