I recently watched the very moving story “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”. It’s a French movie made in 2007, based on the real life story of Jean-Dominique (Jean-Do) Bauby, the Elle editor who, in 1995, suffers a massive stroke and awakes in hospital completely paralysed in what is known as “Locked In Syndrome”. He can’t move, he can’t speak. One eye is sewn up by the doctors, the other eye is the only part of his body he can move. With the help of his therapists, he learns to communicate using only this one eye – eventually writing, with good humour, a book about his memoirs as well as his everyday life and experience with Locked In Syndrome.
In the story, he recounts a vivid memory from not long before his stroke, in which he visits his father. This is a happy memory where he chats with his frail aging father and shaves his beard for him. His father tells him he is proud of him. It is a small part of the movie but poignant and crucial.
This week, I have had moments of dark, bleak emotions and relational problems with both my husband, my teenage kids and even a close friend – and I can mostly place the blame for these situations squarely on myself. If I were to have a stroke now and live the rest of my life with Locked In Syndrome, these would not be the memories I would want to be recalling.
It is important to build happy memories – moments of love, tenderness, glimpses of happiness. Sometimes this is difficult with teenagers, but the glimpses are there.
After almost 20 years of marriage, sometimes my husband and I reminisce about our early life together – how we met, memories of dating, our wedding, the early years of the children. It never fails to make me smile. I hope one day we will look back on the kids’ teenage years and smile at our life now.
I’ve been scrapbooking since 1996 – tentatively at first, seriously since 2000 – and I think that it is one of the most worthwhile things that I can give my family as my legacy. I have scrapbooked sad times – such as when my mother passed away – and day to day life. But mostly I scrapbook the main events and celebrations in our life – happy times. If something happened to me right now, I am happy that I would leave the kids their scrapbooks, and they could relive the happy times anytime they wanted.
But I have to make sure that those times happen.
It’s the end of January and both the kids are starting back at school – Ryx is going into Year 12 (the final year of high school) and Lily into year 10. Going back to school and the end of summer is not a fun time of year and it’s going to be a pretty tough year ahead, as well. But, I am committed to building happy memories for my family, not bad memories.
Money is not abounding right now but making memories doesn’t have to be about going on holidays or eating at great restaurants. Great memories can happen around your kitchen table or even when watching a family movie together. I am going to try to build happy memories for my family over the next couple of weeks! At the very least, I don’t want to make any bad memories. I pray that God will help me and will grant me self-awareness and self-control, and provide opportunities for me to build our family relationships in a positive way.
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