A Trip Down Memory Lane
Can you believe this year’s soon over? This time last year, most of us looked forward to a vaccine that would protect us against a deadly virus. Here we are one year later and hopeful we’ll be able to move on with our lives. The holidays are just around the corner and with them many opportunities to meet and spend time with family and friends.
Recently, I decided to revisit the past, old familiar streets and neighbourhood, places I know no longer exist and have been replaced with other favourites. It’s hard to go back in time, so many feelings of loss, painful memories, sad and happy times. For me, it’s been necessary to recapture moments and times that made a big difference in my life. I’m a small-town girl who loves to be surrounded by nature, and water yet also enjoys life in a big city. Malmö and London offer much and having the opportunity to spend time in both cities mean a lot to me.
Because Malmö is my birth city, where I spent my childhood and adolescence, it was a conscious decision to retrace my youth and explore how I’d feel and how much my past affects my present life. I embrace life wherever I happen to be at the time but didn’t realise how difficult it would be to go back in time. Nearly everything’s within walking distance here, and I’ve frequently passed my parental home on my way home. The old bungalow-style house is just a twenty-minute walk from where we live and looks exactly the same on the outside, just like the entire street. What I didn’t expect was a flood of emotions, and big sadness combined with joy that I had such a lovely time growing up in that house and made friends for life. Why did I feel bereft and inexplicably sad? I asked myself many times and debated whether to not return again. It didn’t have anything to do with my parental home, but the tangible loss of loved ones who no longer are part of my life.
Yes, a home is where the heart is and a piece of me will always be in that house. I don’t need special places to remind me of my parents, they’re always in my heart and thoughts. When I was younger, I didn’t believe it would be difficult and painful to go back in time. I was convinced my life would be the same albeit in a different city and country. Now I know I’ll always leave a piece of my heart in either city depending on where I live at the time. The real reason I felt sad and lonely walking the old streets and pavements, were the constant memories and flashbacks of a lost time that’ll never come back. No matter how much it upset me, it also made me feel grateful I had such an idyllic and loving childhood. It’s never easy to return to the past, whether in person or in our minds. People don’t live forever and rekindling with how life used to give me a good perspective on my life journey, present, and future.
Significantly, it helps me decide who and what truly matters and doesn’t. We’ve only got one life. Live it well.