Then I recalled a lesson from my grandmother. She raised me after my parents ODed in a local park.

She said: Honestly, you hear the songs of spring for about three months of the year. Then it becomes memory and like all memories time distorts it twisting it into something it never was. And we…we try to reconstruct those memories, but this only makes them less than they were before. We must cherish the moment when the memory is created knowing that’s all we’ll ever truly have. Before and beyond it’s like wavering red light boldly slicing up the ocean’s horizon as the sun rises and then sets.

Memories, I knew was now humanity’s best possible future.

That’s why we shoot pictures and make recordings toss selfies all over social media. We’re afraid of losing yesterdays, the fragile memories of moments, a gentle touch, a parting hug, a smile filled with meaning of love quavering at the revelation of its eventual loss.

This is a core segment of the human condition, which lets us know a few uncomfortable truths about ourselves, and others. We are basically afraid of much of life and that fear … it’s an irrefutable revelation if we let that slip.

And it slipped then for me. I walked to the river and tossed my comm-unit into its center where rapid currents would suck it into tomorrow without me, selfies and all.