As our photo scanning project has continued, I have been looking at college pictures. What memories they bring back.
The memories bring smiles and tears. I remember sitting in a dorm room with friends, as we pondered where we might be in ten years.
Everyone except my best friend shared their dreams for the future. Martha said, “We can’t predict the future. We just have to wait and see what it is.”
She was right. None of us could have predicted that after a brief battle with malignant melanoma, Martha would be promoted to Heaven a short five years later.
Other former classmates have died since then. Each is a reminder of the importance of living each day we are given. I think of them now, as they were in the late 1960s, full of fun and joy.
I think of those of us who have stayed in touch over the years and those of us who have reconnected through social media. I smile when someone shares a memory from that time. Even though life took us on different paths, we are held together by memories.
I also think of the love relationships that blossomed in college. It was a time of innocence when we could float for weeks on the memory of a first kiss and the hope for more.
I fell in love while in college. I don’t think it unfaithful to either of our spouses of today that we remember the sincere feelings we had at that time.
When we sang all the words of The Association’s Cherish or Never My Love … or The Four Seasons Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You … or The Seekers I’ll Never Find Another You … we meant it.
We were young and innocent, full of Hopes and Dreams. And that was a blessing. We could not foresee how much lost Love would hurt.
Years later, in a moment of reflection, my ex-husband said to me, “You know nothing is quite as special as a first love. And you were that for me.”
It helped to put everything in perspective. The love we shared in our youth turned out not to be the forever kind of Love we each found later with other people.
But in some ways what we shared as first loves prepared us to later receive The True Long Lasting Loves we both wanted.
We can be thankful for the part we played in each other’s lives that in some ways prepared us for the next chapters.
And we can move on, content to remain in the past as a memory of another time.
Looking at old pictures, I feel profoundly grateful for all the memories and all the people who contributed to those memories.
It gives me an even greater appreciation for where I am now, making memories for that unknown future. Through all the twists and turns in Life, God had and has A Plan and it is a Good Plan.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares The Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11
In the pictures to follow, Martha is on the left next to me. Remembering with Love
Martha Madden.
And for anyone wanting to remember first loves, here is the link to Barbara Streisand’s song from the movie, The Way We Were.
