A memorial is the touchstone that incessantly reminds us that in a world of decay, great things are not held only to history. For great things always arise in the midst of great decay, for that is what makes them great.

To forget is to blithely toss aside the hard lessons that were hard won by others before us, thereby needlessly dooming us to endure the hard lessons that are likely to be forgotten by those who will follow us. And it is altogether reasonable that in order to avoid this repetitive trouncing, God graciously granted us memories.

Memory is a few lines snipped from a larger story that we are privileged to tuck away between the pages of our minds.

Do I forget, or do I refuse to remember?

It’s not that I can’t remember. It’s that I prefer not to remember, which means that I prefer not to remember what not remembering did to me the last time I did it.