Going and Staying

I think it is common for us to wish the bad things away while somehow not losing the good. We want forgetfulness on the one hand, and eternal rememberance on the other. I recently wrote this song, which expressed the desire for remembrance:

Book of Memory (P. Erlandson, 2011)

Frozen moments, sparks were flashing,
Smiles that pierced me to the core.
But I'm nothing to you now, and
Never shall be any more.

All you taught me is forgotten,
All I taught you, gone the same.
All that's left is endless sorrow,
Every time I hear your name.

But in God's own book of memory,
Everything we vowed, still true.
Nothing can erase our chapter;
God remembers I loved you.

All our days of secret sharing,
All our times of joyous prayer.
All our highest hopes and fancies,
Faithfully recorded there.

Each is captured, none forgotten,
Like a jewel of great price.
Every promise, kept unbroken,
Every act of sacrifice.

There in God's own book of memory,
Still we live beyond the pain.
All our kindnesses remembered,
All our love was not in vain.

But perhaps that is not realistic. Perhaps a more possible view is that express by Thomas Hardy in his poem Going and Staying, in which the blind arm of Time brushes away both pleasant and unpleasant memories in an indescriminate fashion:

Going and Staying

The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,
These were the things we wished would stay;
But they were going.

Seasons of blankness as of snow,
The silent bleed of a world decaying,
The moan of multitudes in woe,
These were the things we wished would go;
But they were staying.

Then we looked closelier at Time,
And saw his ghostly arms revolving
To sweep off woeful things with prime,
Things sinister with things sublime
Alike dissolving.