Former Life

Former life.

I was visiting my Dad in memory care the other day. Outside each person's room was a small memento box filled with objects representing their life. As I was leaving I stopped to admire one along the way. 

It was then that I noticed that this woman used to be a teacher at Mountain View College 
during the mid-seventies. Coincidentally, even though our paths had never crossed this was 
the same time that I had attended Mountain View. 

One of the caretakers there told me he thought she had taught math. What struck me at the moment was that all of us have former lives. This woman had been a teacher like me. To teach math she must have been smart and spunky because girls of her generation rarely were mathematicians. I thought about her education, and how many students she must have helped learn a challenging subject. 

However, dementia had robbed her of so much. Her memories were limited, and her ability to live independently were no more. To the onlooker she might give the sense of having nothing left to contribute. But I had to remind myself of all she had already contributed. Each person living there had a former life, and had contributed in their own way. 

Now we have no way of knowing what our future may bring, but we do have 
today. Hopefully, you are building a life that when represented in a memento 
box would be something worth remembering. The next time I see her I will definitely ask about the time we both spent together at Mountain View.