Ticket 2 Ride

Someday, the memory will fade. It seems that more and more people are outliving their retention and recall function. The emptiness robs both future and past days.

To see someone lose the sparkle in their eye, taken over by a dull lifeless stare, the voice once rich, now falls to a whisper and then not at all. The fire is extinguished as fewer functions function.

The bits of information snapping around in our heads contain a lifetime of experiences, knowledge and remnants of feelings. Passions and purpose, that moved mountains, only tremble and rely on steady ground.

The brain cells slowly disappear, and the voids fill with sticky substances and tangled fibers that shut down the power and erase the images showing on tiny screens behind our eyes. There are no more coming attractions.

It truly is the last picture show.

Loved ones shout, and gesture, wanting acknowledgement. Their energy draining, disappearing and replaced by sadness. Thanks, but I’m trapped inside. Take a picture, you may be next.

I write things to remember, to sing the songs of my lifetime, to relive the embers of my youth, and drink the forbidden, cheap wine of learning. Someday, these words, read to me no doubt, may pulse through the sticky goo and complete the circuit of a memory. If it does, the pinball lights may blink and the bells ring as the points pile up and my face creates a weak smile.

I may have forgotten, but briefly, I remember.