April 28, 2016 (Thursday)
I like songs about memories. At the top of the list is “Precious Memories,” beloved far and wide, sung at thousands of funerals, and popular throughout the 20th Century. And there’s the song from Dolly Parton about “a few old memories” stirred up by old memorabilia found on a shelf.
Pictures stir up those memories. Our house is full of pictures. One hangs over my bed; it hung for many years on the wall behind me in my study at First Baptist Church of Rockport. Many people asked me who painted it, because it looked like an oil painting from across the desk. But it was just a copy. It portrayed pounding surf on a rocky shore. Wanda liked it so well when I brought it home after retirement that she hung it on a bedroom wall above the headboard of the bed. It is there today. Rockport is an art center with great artists displaying their work, but my painting cost about $3, frame and all, at the old Woolco store in Corpus Christi during the 1960’s.
The other big pictures in that room are photographs of family members. Each large frame contains about 20 small openings in the matte for smaller photos of grandparents, grandchildren and children–all at various stages of life. Memories flood my soul as I gaze at these collections on the wall. One of my favorites is the five children in the front yard of the old parsonage in downtown Rockport in 1967. David is about 12, holding Dwight (less than a year old), and flanked by a laughing Dan, 11, a posing Debbie, 8, and an excited Dianna, 4. “Precious memories, how they linger, how they ever flood my soul.” That picture was made 49 years ago.
I could go on and on about the pictures in our house. It is a typical old person’s collection of dear family members at different stages of this exciting experience we call “life.”
Bianca Cavender wrote a poem, “The Fleeting Life,” which seems appropriate for closing this blog.
Life stands still for none
Of this I have no doubt
Life and Time are one
And Time is running out.