Memories Made, Memories Lost

"God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December."
~J. M. Barrie
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A lifetime of love, a lifetime of friendship, a lifetime of loathe. All remembered, all stashed away somewhere secret inside one's mind in the form of a memory. You remember the pain, the joy, the fear, the anguish, the love. There are some memories we wish we could forget, we yearn to forget the moment our whole world was turned upside down, the moment when we found out everything we'd ever known was a lie. Then there are others that stay with us forever--a wedding day, the birth of a child, the making of a lifelong friendship. Those are the happy memories that stay with us, but what about the horrific? The sights of a battlefield, coated in crimson, knowing that the blood once ran through a living body, a living body of someone you once knew. The way a mother's scream echoed off the walls as she clutched the corpse of her eldest son. The sacrifices that someone will make for the ones they love, even if it means their pain and anguish. These are the things you can never forget: the blood, the scream, the sacrifice. Then the happy: the wedding, the birth, the friendship. No matter what, our memories stay even if the moment itself is long since past. And all those stories of love? They can be forgotten in the hatred of a moment. And the name that gave the irresistible feeling of joy will someday make the person not smile, they won't ever smile or feel the same irresistible feeling they once did. And none of this could happen without one single component: memories.