Before we left town for the bliss of Florida I realized I had misplaced some receipts and an important piece of paper. With no time to look for them on the day of departure I resolved to wait until our return. Yesterday I spent hours looking for them. Hours. I looked in every place I generally stack stuff or set it aside for later. I retraced steps over and over. No avail. Lost. Finally, I retraced my steps one more time and there they were. Hiding underneath a stack of books I have intended to read during sabbatical.
I get very upset when I lose things. Losing something creates an anxiety in me that is not satisfied, ever, until what has been lost is found. It's like a black hole opens up inside of me and by the sheer amount of gravity is contains sucks all the joy, all the energy, all the cognitive abilities into its black hole nothingness until what is lost has been found. Losing and recovering are huge processes for me, which is why I go to some lengths not to lose things.
Though I am not a person of the Catholic faith I have a huge and healthy respect for the founder and defender of the Christian faith since the time of the first Apostles. The first saint of the Church to whom I was introduced was St. Christopher. St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers because he is said to have carried a child across a river, the child being unknown to him, to discover on the side of the river that it was the Christ child. But, that's not why I knew about him. About the time I began to notice that girls were different than boys and not altogether undesirable my classmates would give and receive St. Christopher medals to one another as a sign they were going steady.
The patron saint of lost things is St. Anthony. St. Anthony was a Franciscan monk who was credited with the recovery of lost people, lost souls and even lost spiritual items. Thus, he became for the Holy Roman Church, the patron saint of lost things.
I supposed I ought to know a little more about St. Anthony since I seem to lose things. What troubled me most over the past week of the receipts and papers being lost was that I could not remember cleaning out my billfold and putting the items somewhere. That event is not a part of my mental record. That troubles me deeply. How can I go through a set of actions and not remember them at all, even if the evidence is clear that I did take a set of actions? I fear losing my memory.
St. Anthony are about to get more acquainted. Perhaps praying through St. Anthony will help me find my memory.
We, as a society, make jokes about getting older and losing our memory, but it isn't anywhere close to a joke for me. Without memory I might well be lost. Memory defines who I am, and the road I traveled to get here. Without memory of the events, the places, the people, the mistakes, the good deeds, the learning -- will I lose myself? Surely, those who suffer the hellish effects of Alzheimer's wonder the very same things as they sense themselves losing ground to the darkness. It's why I believe Alzheimer's to be the most evil of the diseases we humans face -- because it robs us of our identity which is bound up in our memory of who we are.
On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took the bread, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to the disciples saying, "Take, eat. This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me." Likewise, after supper he took the cup and when he had given thanks he gave it to the disciples saying, "Drink of this, all of you. This is my blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of sin. Do this in remembrance of me."
Nobody wants to lose the memory of that.
Peace and Love,
Jerry
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