It's said that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Change, though? That's a constant, too. Also entropy. The places and objects we value inevitably decay.
For nine years of my life, I attended a rural public school. It ceased to exist as the new millennium began, the victim of cutbacks and downsizing. I can't tell you what the building has been for the past several years, but I can tell you what it is today. It's a wasteland of refuse and decomposing building materials, home only to ghosts of my youth and little else of value. Not to me, or to anyone else, it would seem.
I remarked to my partner as we drove home this evening that it saddened me to see these landmarks of my youth left to disrepair and time. There's nothing left of who I was, I said. You are left, she replied. And that's what it comes down to, I suppose.
I was attending this school during the preparations for a big, anniversary-style reunion, and even as a child I remember thinking I'd return one day, too. I'd show my own children the place where Daddy had gone to school. That wasn't to be.
Today was a reminder to me of why I try not to overvalue things. Things wither. Memories are admittedly more elusive to grasp, to hold. The effort, though, is unspeakably more important.