what about the past

 Memories ....are they a bad thing  that we have them or are they something that are essential to making us who we are . Should we look at the things that have gone on in the past and wonder why they happened, or should we turn our backs on them and try to shut them away pretending that none of them ever happened ....
i look at the people i have known in my life who have had dementia of some kind , both short term and long and i see how the elderly ones that i have worked with have only the memories of their childhood and past to live in as the present day has a habit of eluding them.
A particular person that springs to mind was of a Lady who was in her 50's but had bad dementia. She loved the old war songs that were song such as "pack up your troubles  in your old kit bag" and "if you were the only girl in the world " and would sing them when she thought that nobody was listening to her, she could remember her ration coupons and would fret because she could not find them, and yet if you were to ask her what she had for her last meal she couldnt remember.  i lost count of the number of times she asked who i was or another member of staff, and she could never remember which room was hers. She was trapped in a way in her past and there was no key to unlock her into the future as it got lost as soon as we found it.
i wonder what her life would have been like without her memories of the past ... She would have been a cabbage i guess to a certain extent, but there again she wouldnt have known much about it and it would only be the people around her that noticed and were sad.
The past has made me who i am , ( the good bits and the bad) and that is the thing that i am trying to focus on when the bad pieces rare their heads.....i needed those things to have happened to have made me into the person that i am now, without them my whole persona would be different . You can not shut things in boxes and pretend that they havent happened but you "can"  realise that they make you stronger and into the wonderful person that you are in this life now and use them as learning curves.
heh so what about the past?     Its just a gateway to get to the present .
the light of a candle is never lessened by lighting another .