When Memories Are All We Have

I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.

—Psalm 13:6

My mom and dad and brother have grown through the years into my closest friends, the people who tell me the most searing truth, who catch me when I fall, who give me soft places to rest and present to me a bright future when the only one I can see from my vantage point is dim and breaking before my eyes. Families can go either way, and I take no credit for the way we’ve gone. I accept it like a gift or a winning lottery ticket, and I hold that ticket in my hand tightly, and I take every chance I can get to be with them, for an afternoon, for a weekend, for a vacation, and every moment feels like being given one more winning ticket.

We’ve invested our vacations with as many memories as we can make, crammed them full of love and conversations and stories and long walks and meals and boat rides, because there will be a day when memories are all we have, and I want to know that we have more than we need to last us the rest of our lives.