MEMORY

For the last twenty-five years I have been dealing with the memory loss of two of the most cherished people of my life.  That of my beloved wife of over fifty years and her brother, my best friend.  Her brother passed away several years ago and my wife after spending several years in a nursing home died in  August of 2001.  They both had Alzheimers disease. The most insidious malady know to mankind.

No one under the shining sun is more qualified to talk about the ravages of memory loss madness than I am.

An analogy.  My beloved country is also suffering from loss of memory, a disease for which I am troubled!

The likeness of the pain and agony of the two diseases and the slow journey into oblivion and beyond, leads me to believe that the consequences will ultimately be the same.

I know not what caused the regression within the mind of my dearest and lifetime companion; no one knows for sure.  I do know however, what causes the memory crisis within our society.

It is simple - our sins of omission.

The three basic institutions by which man lives, the family, the church and the government have simply neglected to teach our children basic history.  Heritage demands a living and continuous factual memory.  The most precious of memories are always passed on, one on one, from one generation to another.  We are failing at this task.  We are caught up into the present and we are purposely excluding all other dimensions of time, in our quest for self-gratification.  We are slowly forgetting who we are!

In a lifetime of study of these basic institutions I find they have one thing in common.  Sooner or later they become separate entities unto themselves and begin to perputate their own image, thereby forgetting the intended purposes for their own existence.  I call it Barney's Law of Institutionality! 

I don't believe that I have ever had an original thought, or at least I cannot think of one off the top of my head.  The people of the past discovered and passed down our basic fundamental truths.  If we, as a people, do not learn from these discoveries and mistakes and keep their memory fresh within each of us, our ignorance will grow with each passing generation.

Memory is the residual accumulation of knowledge, experienced or taught, and without it we become puppets on a string, manipulated by false prophets of our institutions.

It is time to recheck our memories when our children cannot distinguish the difference of right and wrong and the TV reports are advising us, in living color, that our children are killing each other on a daily basis; then we wring our hands and wonder why!

When I was a child I went to court with my father and watched as a tearful judge pronounce the death sentence on a young man found guilty of murder.  The memory of this mans crimes and his meanness still lingers in my mind to this day.  I learned what not to do. One example of tough love by a caring father and a lesson learned the hard way.  A memory!

As a society, we have forgotten our past, the trials, the tribulations, the lessons learned,
both good and bad - our heritage.  We are leaving our children without the necessary accumulation of knowledge, a memory, to provide them with a protective shield.

Our seventy year experiment with our liberal social engineering must come to an end.  It is time to return to the basics and remember that as citizens we must pledge our allegiance to our God, our family, our community, our county, our state, our nation and in that order.

Life is not a bed of roses.  Challenge your children with all the hard choices of life that our ancestors were forced to face.  Turn their boredom into a memory!