A few days ago I accompanied C., who had been my host sister nearly three decades ago, to an event that she organized as part of her work on behalf of muncipal youth services in the county where she lives in Germany. With a handful of teenagers and a couple of adult co-workers, they created an event with borrowed and invented games to increase political awareness in local youth. On this day, we traveled in their bus to a local special needs high school to spend an hour and a half with kids from the 10th grade – aged 15 or 16 and about to graduate.

C. and I were in charge of the game Politik (politics) Memory and Begriff (concepts) Memory. Do you remember those card games with paris of pictures turned upside down and you have to find the matching pairs? That was this game, adapted to increase familiarity with political concepts. Later this year is the national election and the local government supports a better-informed youth, apparently. So we played Memory (yes, they use the English word, because that’s just what Germans do for about a tenth of their daily communication, a number which increases the younger one is). We learned the name of where the German president lives (Shloß Bellvue) and what year the Euro (€) was introduced (2001) and that Germany currently has more exports than imports.

All stuff I am likely to forget.

Yesterday I said good-bye to C. and her lovely husband, P. My time with them was much too short and I only have myself to blame. We made the best of it with deep conversations, a walk in the woods, good food, short naps, and old memories.

My host sister remembers things I do not. She complains about holes in her memory, but if that’s the case, then I have gaping voids. Instead of bemoaning this insistent fact, I feel deeply grateful that I got to hear old stories and be reminded of things that happened in my life. Sometimes the stories prompted my own vague recollection. Sometimes they found no traction. I believed every story she told, but I did not experience an internal point of confirmation.

For instance, she spoke of the 28-year-old good-bye party where I read from a book called, translated from the German title, The Invisible Ring by Richard Bach.  (The English title is There’s No Such Place as Far Away.)  At that party, according to C., she gave me a ring from her finger as a gesture of faith that we would see each other again. She then, in real time, now in 2013, removed a silver ring from her finger and placed it on mine. It was all very moving.

The thing is, and I’m embarrassed to say, I don’t remember the original ring or the gesture.  I most certainly do not have the ring anymore. When I inquired about the book, she said I took it home to America with me and I felt immediately sheepish, as I have not seen that book in a very, very long time.

All this memory loss is making me sad. I feel irresponsible and ungrateful and somehow, though I don’t quite understand the connection, selfish. Who am I to forget such a generous gesture? Who am I to lose track of such important moments between me and people I cherish?

What an ingrate!

I am worried about this ring now on my finger. Will I lose it? My only responsible answer is that it is likely. I don’t have a great track record. Even if I manage to retain it, in another 15 or 30 years will I remember from whom and whence it came?

I know that the spiritual lesson and reality of impermanence is at play here. And perhaps also self compassion and metta (lovingkindness). If it was just about my losing something I gave myself or if I forgot something only I knew about or held as valuable, I think I would not be struggling with this. These days, I do get a little flustered with my own difficulties with word-retrieval, but I have become pretty relaxed about lost or broken items.

Still, it does not feel good to forget things important to other people, particularly those who love me and whom I love. It’s kind of like my unintended slight of the whole country of Italy because I can’t remember major aspects of my time there. Though not intended as such, it can be experienced as insulting or hurtful to the people I love; somehow a message not about how my mind works, but about the esteem with which I hold them.

Perhaps I should add to the list of spiritual lessons at work here is one about clinging and attachment – to my own mind, as well as to the understanding that memories are not indicators of the degree to which one is cherished, as any child of a parent with Alzheimer’s will tell you. Or me.