Close your eyes - what do you see?

Think of your childhood in a flash not at length. Close your eyes. What do you see?

I see myself at 7 yrs of age. I am with my grandmother who was in the early stages of a devastating disease - MS. At the time she has a walker but 5 years later she would become paralyzed from the neck down and condemned to a hospital bed.

We are on a picnic by a large fountain that shoots up from the mossy base so high that I can see it catch the rays of the sun. My grandmother is smiling and laughing and she affectionately brushes my cheek with her hand and kisses me on the forehead and says "I am very proud of you and I love you."

I close my eyes again and I see my dog Buster who passed away last fall just before his fifth birthday from Cancer. This is a constant vision I have of him. He is sitting on the top stair waiting for me to come home. I open the door and there he is just waiting - no matter how long - he waits. He runs down to greet me and pushes me into the wall with his excitement. He chases his tail and we make our way to the living room where I tell him all about my day while he places his head in my lap. He's just happy I'm home and I'm just happy I have him to come home to and I don't want to open my eyes because I know he won't be there ever again.

Memories are black and white film strips left in a dark, dusty room curled up on the floor waiting for us to discover them. Sometimes we just choose to let them be while other times we want so badly to get down on that floor, face in hands, knees pressed against the surface searching as they travel through our minds and become a movie with no beginning and only one end.

My eyes are closed. I see Buster and my Grandmother. She is able to walk and he is at her side. This isn't a memory because it never happened or perhaps it is happening now and every day in a much better place than here.

I open my eyes and they are gone.