The Entropy of Memory

Funny isn't it, that when you put some idea, some question into the universe, as long as you're listening, you always get an answer. The answer to my question about what to do for Arron's birthday just arrived in the form of an email from a fellow widow who serves on the Program Committee of the Seattle Healing Center with me. She was telling us about how she regretted that she hadn't attended the ceremony where her husband's ashes were spread on San Fransisco Bay twenty years before. We all understood that kind of regret and encouraged her to create her own ceremony, that the time elapsed didn't matter, that the ashes themselves didn't matter. She took us to heart and did just that. She has just sent a piece that she wrote about the ceremony. She sat around a beach with tiki candles burning, telling stories about her husband with his sisters. The ashes were not important, remembering her husband was. I don't need a Carvel cake to remember Arron. Or a body, or ashes. I just need a story or two. Perhaps I will elicit stories of Arron from his friends this year for his birthday. For his kids. I will put them together and we can all remember him. His commercial dancing, the nickname for his hammer (Basil), the Mini Mouse pancakes, his favorite word, entropy.en·tro·py n1. a measure of the disorder that exists in a system2. a measure of the energy in a system or process that is unavailable to do work.3. a measure of the random errors (noise) occurring in the transmission of signals, and from this a measure of the efficiency of transmission systemsI am sure there is some level of entropy that is inherent in memory. The stories will not be perfectly accurate. I think he would appreciate that.