SCRAPBOOKS

Blessed are the children of scrap bookers for they shall inherit our scrapbooks!

Some things are greater than a mere sum of their parts. Quilts. Jig-saw puzzles. Scrapbooks. Mine rose from the ashes of my son's death to explore what his life meant to me and then to explore what my life means to me. It can't save me for him. He's gone. But it might inspire you to explore what your life means to you. So begin your scrapbook but keep in mind that except for astronauts, nobody gets off this planet alive, and everyone is forgotten—some sooner than others. If you're anything like me, you'd prefer immortality by not dying and that your scrapbook would keep the world from forgetting you. That's wishful thinking, of course, so accept the inevitability that your scrapbook, like mine, will be placed on a shelf and forgotten.

You'll have to plumb the depths of your memories, of course, because without reflection life is just a string of incidents connected by the passage of time. Like salmon swimming upstream, we get too busy in the here and now to see how the circumstances we met and the choices we made became a story with a plot and a point. So make your scrapbook a memoir of pictures and words so it shows and tells the story of your journey from the mornings to the afternoons and evenings of your life. Keep in mind, however, that you will find it difficult to peek over the edge of your memories and see things in the raw. Pictures can only show the truth but words can tell a lie. So let your pictures guide your words so you are less likely to blur fact with fiction and distort your view of yesterday through the rear-view mirror of today. Why is yesterday important? Because it's the past rolled out for understanding so the choices you make today will put you on a path with heart into tomorrow.

So let your scrapbook be a thoughtful, measured look at things that blessed your past rather than things that cursed your present—not a cynical account of things that didn't suck then because they do now. Let it show the deep connections and the positive impact your friends had on your life. That you learned the difference between being alone and being lonely. That you're following a path less traveled by instead of getting stuck in a rut. Let it not be a sour-grapes look at who you might have been. Let it be a reunion with all the people you have been—a life that will end with a slide into home plate and an ecstatic... Wow, what a ride!

Alice discovered a Wonderland by following a rabbit down a hole and Dorothy discovered a Wizard by following a yellow brick road. Both came back changed and you will too by following your memories into yesterday. Revisit the heroes of your life... one of them is you!