We recently celebrated D-Day with the very few remaining participants. They range in age from 99 to over 100 years old. This will probably be the last day that most will be here to share their memories. Then their memories—like those who participated in prior wars– become history.
Most of these men were so traumatized that they didn’t share their memories of that eventful day for many years. Some never did.

My own father, who served in the Pacific during WWII, never talked about that time until the last evening that I visited with him before he died. That was the first that I heard about the LST that he missed getting on and which was sunk with no survivors. Or about seeing Japanese planes flying so low with their bombs that the pilots waved to the men on the ground.

All of us have memories that will become history when our obituary is published. Some may be uplifting. Others may be painful. Some will be important to our families or even, for a few, to the world. Others may be mundane but important to us.

We may not think of them as memories to be shared but just as living our lives one day at a time.

But now is the time. Share those memories before you no longer can and they, like you, will be forgotten as history moves on.

How, you may ask?

There are many ways. Creating a blog or a website such as mine at https://joycereid.com may be one way if you are proficient enough to do that. But even that will disappear when you are no longer around to pay the hosting fees.

Record your memories on tape or video. But tape recorders also become history as technology changes.

Start a journal or what I call “A Memory Book” where you record those memories on paper. To me, this is the best way.

My aunt sent me a letter filled with her memories of her childhood at the turn of the century after I asked her to write them down. That letter was filled with stories that I had never heard before and would have just vanished into history had she not done so.

My own memories include not only my own but those that were told to me by my mother as we sat on the front porch on hot summer days as well as stories told by others.

We are on this earth for a limited amount of time. Some of us have longer than others. Those of us who are older realize that the timer is running out. But even if you are young, you don’t know how long you have to share the memories that you have accumulated before they become forgotten history.

So share them now. Write them down before you and your memories are forgotten.