The light has returned

Whatcom Falls bridge

 Ah, spring! It's definitely springing around here. Yesterday Melanie, Chris and I walked around five-ish miles in Whatcom Falls Park, and I captured this picture that shows the filtered sunlight and the gorgeous bridge. It (the bridge) was built by the Works Progress Association (WPA), one of Franklin Roosevelt's attempts to help the country recover from the Great Depression.

From 1939 to 1940, the WPA built the stone bridge and retaining walls that overlook the waterfalls at Whatcom Falls Park. Builders salvaged Chuckanut sandstone arches from Pike Building, an 1891 downtown landmark lost in a fire. The WPA also funded the park’s fish hatchery in 1936 alongside the State Game Commission and Whatcom County Sportsmen’s Association. The bridge continues to provide a viewing platform for one of Bellingham’s most famous natural features. (Whatcom Talk)

I love living here in Bellingham, and to think this beautiful bridge was built even before I was born. I sure hope it remains for many more centuries to come for more people to enjoy its beauty. Although I won't be here in corporeal form anyway, I will have walked across this bridge many, many times before it's all over.

It must have something to do with approaching a major landmark in my life, becoming an octogenarian. I've got lots of friends who are already there and doing quite well, but I keep thinking about how quickly the decade of my seventies flew right on by. Of course, it's possible I'll make it to ninety, but considering the lack of longevity in my family genes, I'm certainly not considering it likely. My dear sister PJ would have turned 72 this week, but she died at 63 of heart disease. My own son died at 40 of the same thing, which reminds me that it's time for me to make an appointment for my annual Wellness checkup. My efforts at exercise and following a reasonably sensible diet have helped me stay relatively healthy.

The two areas of health issues that loom large for me are (1) my eyesight and the macular degeneration that is slowly taking away my ability to see. And (2) whether or not my mind is still functioning properly. I have become so forgetful, and my memory is growing gaps that scare me. What good is a long life if you don't know who you are anymore? When I see my doctor I'll ask her what she thinks, but she's a youngster in comparison to me. It's not an easy thing to measure another person's mental processes, especially early on.

I've got a dear friend who has developed Alzheimer's Disease and no longer can hike or drive or do many of the activities that he enjoyed so much. He needs a companion to be with him whenever he ventures outdoors any more. I haven't seen him around for a few months, and I worry that he's become confined to an indoor existence, which would be awful for him. When I was younger, I speculated that losing your mental faculties wouldn't be so bad, since you probably wouldn't realize it. Now that I'm at that age, I know it would be very hard to cope with.

I've got a whole lifetime of memories, and it would be very hard to try to recall a time in my life and find my ability to remember it just... gone. It's been seven years since I stopped skydiving, but the memories of that quarter-century of activity is precious to me. From that first tandem jump in 1990 to my final leap from an airplane in 2015, those thousands of jumps will always be part of me. I've got logbooks that I can peruse if I want to remember a particular jump, but when I look back to that time, those years define who I have become today. 

Lately I've been wearing an old jacket from the World Freefall Convention in 1998, and I realize that it brings back those years in a way I'd forgotten. At least I can still remember defining moments, such as when we got married in freefall in 1994, when I became a skydiving instructor in 1992 and the hundreds of students I taught in countless first-jump courses, and the myriad lifelong friends I still see on Facebook. There was a time when I would proudly wear skydiving gear and hope that people would ask me about my experiences, but no longer. Now I feel a little bit embarrassed when someone asks me about it. That's not to say that I won't sit down with a skydiving friend and reminisce about the old days, but those memories have all faded as time goes by. But for now, I can still remember that I was once an active and enthusiastic skydiver.

I was also a mother, and the memories of having given birth to my two sons are still there, if I rummage around inside my mind and recall that period of time in my life. But since they are both gone, and since my dream of becoming a grandmother will never come to pass, I pull out those memories much less often. Pictures will sometimes help me to recall how much I loved them, but their memories are overlaid with pain, so I guess it makes sense that I don't try to recall them very much. Another part of my past gone, with only ephemeral waves of recollections surfacing now and then.

Gosh, now that I've gone rummaging around in my mind for memories, I find I have plenty of them still there, still waiting for me to recall them. When I find myself doubting my ability to recall experiences, a quick perusal of the many years of my life are still available, which is very encouraging. Whew! I guess I'll lay that worry aside for awhile yet. 

These years of being a blogger are all retained by Blogspot, and I suppose it would be fun to take a tour of my oldest blogs and see what emerges from memory. I've been writing here since 2009 (and just went back to see when I wrote the first one: February 2009) and think it would be fun to re-read them and see what memories are activated by doing it. I've written more than 2,000 posts over on my other blog, and 650 here, only writing once a week. That's a whole lotta posts to read! Why not? I'm probably going to do that, at least I'm thinking about it.

I realize I have just found a way to make myself feel much better about my memory problems, and that gives me great joy. That, and the fun I have reading your comments through the years, and your own blog posts. My virtual family is only possible because of this wonderful activity of blogging. I am so glad to have such a wonderful resource, and that I can share it with you as well. 

And with that, I've run out of time to write, since John will be here early to pick me up and take me for our Sunday breakfast in Fairhaven. My dear partner sleeps quietly next to me, the tea is gone, and my day ahead beckons. Yes, the light has definitely returned! Until we meet again, dear friends, I wish you the best of weeks ahead.