Life is slippery. Even before the dying, the disease, the breakup, the catastrophic loss, there is the forgetting. The constant, unstoppable erosion of moments, hours, entire days washed out to sea. The shoreline is fragile. Even while standing in the shallows, looking up with occasional awe, thinking we must always remember this exactly as it is, entire months and years are pulled away from us and lost in dark tides.

Even as we tell ourselves we must bear witness, we cannot keep the sand at shore. The mind is not made to remember. The mind is made to forget.

Thus, the notebook. The notes we scribble ourselves. The journals. The commonplace book. The photographs. The social media posts. The stories and poems and jokes we share. The blog post. This blog.

The friends we find and those we keep. Communities. The document that is our lives. Reminding ourselves we were here. In this place. At this moment. Together.