Roy’s Sunday Letter for October 25, 2026

A favorite song of Merle Haggard was “My Favorite Memory.” A song of the memory of good times and long-time love.
What would be one of your favorite memories of places, family, friends, and events? We also learn from memories that may be painful. This Sunday Letter is about our short-term and long-term memories, which seem important to retain and enjoy, and which memories to let go and fade away.

“Nothing is really lost as long as we can remember,” The Story Girl

Our memories can be warm, joyful and motivate us to share with others. Recent memories, or those of long ago can give us renewing energy, meaning, and the ways we have related to others. Even the best of memories can be messy, confusing and true to the age, place, and life stage of you at that time.

Memory has an important role in our physical, emotional, and spiritual lives. Memories allow us to encode, store, and retrieve knowledge and experiences. In recalling a memory, we may engage seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling or even tasting. We use all these senses when we recall a movie, book, or preparing to ride a bike after years of not riding.

For those of us with memory retention we are aware and concerned with friends and so many others living with Alzheimer’s, dementia, brain injury, mental disability, or depression. When I with those with memory loss, I do my best to be present with their interests, connections, and ability. The honoring of those moments is an honoring of us all.

These long-ago events were important to me then, even more important today.

• Jim Greene brought N. Carolina Campus Ministers together in retreat for four nights. three days. “In The Oaks” was my first professional retreat. I built on those memories with my agency work, board members and staff for the next forty years.
• I remember meeting my first AIDS patient. In the l980’s a grandmother had surgery and received a blood transfusion, at John Peter Smith. At that time, it was a time when no one knew about “bad blood.” She asked me to set with her when she told her grandchildren of her then to be a shortened life.
• The memory and print photo of the 2003 ribbon cutting to open The Hope & Healing Place, A Grief & Loss Center, Amarillo, remains alive with the sight of volunteers, families and supporters on that most special day. Twenty-three years later HHP continues to serve children and families in the Texas Panhandle.
• My first day at William James Middle School is a memory of panic, smothering and being swallowed by crowded hallways of kids. The increase of noise, being swallowed in the crowded hallways between classes and feeling the loss of knowing where to go and do of D. McRae Elementary. By day three these were my people, my generation.

Roy, so many memories of the faces, places, and event of how I got to be me.