A music icon died today. John Prine. A friend posted that he’d passed away and tagged it with one of his songs; Souvenirs. I clicked on the link and when he started singing I felt as if a door opened in my mind. It’s funny how unexpected memories will sweep over me from out of the blue.

A song, a scent, and sometimes just an odd feeling can open one of those doors.

This time when it opened I was taken back to something my grandmother told me when I was sitting with her in her bedroom at my uncle’s home after she had broken up housekeeping and moved to Tennessee. She was probably ninety-six or seven at the time.

She told me, “Ricky don’t worry about accumulating a lot of things - possessions. It’s all just stuff. I know it’s tempting. I guess it’s natural for folks to want things they don’t have.You know why I’m telling you this? It’s because sooner or later someone else will own everything that you own now.”

I nodded understandingly.

“Look around here in this bedroom. Everything that’s left of my life is in this one room. It amounts to a few pictures I can hardly see anymore. A few trinkets shoved in that chest’a drawers over there and a few clothes in that closet.

Ricky don’t collect stuff. Collect memories. Go places. Visit people. Do things. Experience all of life that you can. That’s stuff no one can take away from you.”

Her head tilted back. She shut her eyes, and said, “I can sit here in this room and travel back to all those places I went to. I can hear those sweet conversations I had with people that are now gone. No one can take those things away from me, and I can fill my days sitting here remembering.“

She was right. I took note of what she told me that day. I’ve made a lot of memories. From time to time I’ll jot them down. Sometimes I share them with others.

Souvenirs is what John Prine called them. I’m going to miss his creative genius and how he was able to make music with his memories and life observations.

It seems as if he and my grandmother thought along the same lines.

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Rick Algood
April 8, 2020