Though all the years behind us lingering in memory are past we lived them as an integral part of our lives, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. The years just seem to have vanished, each one bringing another to follow, until they accumulate to the extent that the realization leaves us gap-mouthed with astonishment. Where did they all go? When did it all happen? Why were we not more aware? 

Well, we were aware, we were fully involved in every second of every hour of every week and month that the passage of time allowed us to live through. And here we are at the present, looking back and bemused by it all. Wasn't it only yesterday ... ? It was, it was many yesterdays and they're gone -- to be replaced with many more ahead of us.

Late last year I couldn't believe our oldest child had passed sixty years of age to reach 61. Now I'm agape that our middle child is approaching her 60th year. I can recall their childhood at various stages, as can we all when we look back at the most important years of our lives when we were young, our children were infants and then the slow approach to childhood merging gradually with adulthood. But this all happened when we were young.

Now our children are much, much older than we were when we were raising our family. They have gone through their own transformative years. Their years are bumping up against ours, now. Where once, long ago, the disparity in years between us as parents and children was great. Somehow, the gap appears to have narrowed now that we're in our mid-80s and our children are approaching the years when we began to think of ourselves as being 'elderly'. And finally understood that every year of our lives is important and meaningful.

That, truly, is life, recalled from the past deep within our most intimate and meaningful memories, and as we live it from day to day melding into the years that are gone but which our memory retains the feel and fragrance and flavour of.

Today is another day, however, begging to be lived and so we respond to the best of our abilities not to disappoint the day. And nor should it be disappointed. It is an important day for many people according to the calendar of their faith. And nature saw fit to confer on this Easter Sunday a disarming temperature, a whisper of wind and the brilliance of a sun unfettered by clouds.

It's the first day since mid-fall of last year that our two little dogs have been out to the woodland trails in the ravine without a winter jacket or a fall/spring tee-shirt for comfort from biting cold and hostile winds. Today they wore only their harnesses. Ah, and their rubber boots to keep their dainty little paws from mucking about in the thick sludge that now engulfs many of the forest trails that are still in the process of shedding winter's snow and ice.

While we saw few people and their companion dogs out yesterday on an almost-equally-beautiful day, today's amble along the trails was replete with serendipitous greetings among community dogs, glad to see one another, speaking the language of welcome-barks. 

We know they harbour memories, they give us ample indication of just how good their memories are. We have no idea, however, of what is most important to them in the retention of their memories and they have no way of communicating that to us other than action and reaction informing us that they don't forget. The question is, of their memories what are those that bear emotional relevance and are there any that reflect for them anything similar to those we treasure?