Blog 2 "You must remember this"

 My diabetic friend spends a lot of time remembering her past. She can not have her favorite foods any more, so she tries to remember how they tasted. She thinks of the texture, the smell, the way they felt on her tongue and fingers if they were a finger food. Cheetos, crunchy, smelly, sucking the orange powder off fingers. 

She loved watermelon, the smell of the flesh, the sound of slicing, the slurp of juices, cool, and refreshing. She is nostalgic for the days when she did not have to be careful, because, she says, “The past is all I have.” My friend embraces her past, loves her past, lives in her past. Mr. Ono was trapped by the past he could not change, so he avoided his past. 

      Nostalgia is like a two-edged sword. If the past was happy, it is hard to get past it and live in the misery of the present and have to live with the fear of the future. If the past was miserable, it is hard to remember, but there are too many reminders of the past. My cousin always typed wrong, typing “,,,” instead of “…” and to this day, when I make a mistake in typing and type two or more commas in a row I think of him and remember his tragic death. It is a two-edged sword. At the sight of multiple commas I remember the joy of my cousin’s life and immediately I remember the tragedy of his accident and the broken heart of his mother and his wife and children. Even if we wanted to forget, we can not because a million things remind us of him and say, “You must remember this.” 

      Everyone in the life of Mr. Ono told him he had to remember his past. His daughters recalled memories of their mother. Matsuda reminded him of the art they shared. Mrs. Kawakami reminded him of the better days in the neighborhood and together they were nostalgic for the “good old days” before mistakes were made and regrets were firmly engraved into his soul. Like many people who become nostalgic, they want to return to the better times. Mrs. Kawakami tried to get Mr. Ono to retrieve their good life: 

“Sensei, you must try and persuade your friends to start coming back to these parts. In fact, perhaps each time we see an old face from those days, we should be stopping him and telling him to come here to this little place. That way we could start rebuilding the old days” (Ishiguro 76).

      I am not yet old enough to become truly nostalgic. These are the days I will be nostalgic of, so I am trying to make very good memories to be nostalgic over. I think I will try to embrace my past instead of fear it or avoid it.