Disappeared - (Coda)

I left the river that day not free of melancholy wrought by the past, but with an understanding of how I could honor that feeling in my life without it overwhelming me. Realization was crystal clear that they are the disappeared, the people and places that I once knew now gone or altered beyond easy recognition. Rejected or removed, they cannot be forgotten. A factory building, a younger man, a sea of grass or grieving father: the heart holds a place for all of them. They had their habits. But there comes a time when past habits fail to serve us well in present living. We remember, not to relive the past but to learn from it. In this world, to learn is to grow. Growth enables the shedding of our skins in glorious, cyclical rebirth.

I have in my possession a collection of persons that no longer exist, except in the reservoir of memory, held to a bifurcated existence composed of pixels and neurochemicals. These outlines and shadows etched by experience into silicon and grey matter, writ plain on the heart. They are installed in a personal Hall of Memory curated by my future self, to consult in times of need.