Memories don't fade the way people think they do. They don't grow dim like old photographs or crack like paint on weathered wood. Some memories stay sharp as broken glass, cutting fresh every time you handle them. Others transform, like stones worn smooth by water, their edges softened but their weight unchanged.
I carry memories with different textures, different temperatures. Some burn bright and clean, like flames that refuse to flicker. Others sit heavy and solid, like stones in my chest. Each one has found its place in the geography of my mind.
But memories are strange creatures. They don't stay where you put them. They wander. They shift. They surface at unexpected moments, triggered by the taste of bitter coffee, the sound of helicopters overhead, the way morning light cuts through mountain mist.
Sometimes I think memory is just another word for love with nowhere to go. All that feeling for people who are gone, experiences that ended, moments that can't return; it has to live somewhere. So it lives in us, in the spaces between our ribs, in the quiet hours before dawn, in the ritual of pouring two glasses when you only need one.
The hardest part isn't remembering. It's learning how to carry the memories without drowning in them. How to honor the weight without being crushed by it. How to turn survival guilt into survival purpose.
Memory teaches patience. Some truths take decades to understand. Some wounds need years to reveal their gifts. The boy who went to war and the man who came back - they're the same person, but memory has rewritten everything in between.
These days, I'm learning to be grateful for memory's stubborn persistence. It keeps my brothers alive in ways that matter. It carries forward their lessons, their laughter, their love. It refuses to let their sacrifices fade into footnotes.
Memory isn't a burden to bear. It's a trust to keep. A story to tell. A bridge between who we were and who we're becoming.
And sometimes, in the quiet moments when memory feels heaviest, I hear whispers of wisdom from the past: keep moving, stay alive. Not just breathing, but living. Making each day count for something.
Memory, it turns out, is how we do that. One story at a time. One moment at a time. One breath at a time.