The Nine Rooms

From the prologue-Where does the time go? It seems like just yesterday that two young people found each other and embarked together on life's journey. How is it that time slips by until one day we wake up with life behind us? Try as I might, all the little moments fade into the mists of memory. If I stand with the things I know best, the fog lifts; it lifts and for a brief instant the light of a thousand memories brightens all around me. They take no order and spare no feeling. I can never tell when the sight of a familiar room, the feel of a piece of furniture or the scent from the kitchen will send memories wildly crashing through the barriers of my day-to-day existence. Like puppies with muddy paws, these memories don't think or care what they do. They don't know that the constant reminders of love and loss, happiness and pain, success and failure should have a time and place to be remembered. They should not have free run of the heart.There are many ways men run, hide, or try to trick memory back into the Pandora's box from which it springs. Some take refuge in wine or in past glory while others chase the fashions of the moment. None of these work. Once the wine bottle empties, the glories vanish and the fashions shift, the memories return all the more powerful as if the effort to escape them only made them stronger. For me, the way through memories is not to escape. I would rather feel the pain of memories and of times past than the blank now of a man with no recollection. Walking through these old familiar rooms, the times of love return with all their warmth and all their finality. HappinessIf I could give but one gift to the world, Forget me, forget her, forget usForget the long wonderful times we spent in the shadow of our special rock.Give the world a taste of the happiness two souls shared in a small forgotten place, Let people look upon each other the way we did.