“Whenever,” began the man with a look of practised and profound resignation, “we argue, my wife gets historical!” “You mean ‘hysterical,’” corrected his companion, a stranger who had made the mistake of politely nodding in his direction as he sipped his tea at the next table. “No. I mean historical – she keeps bringing up the past!” The main point of that exchange is that you can’t bring up the past if there isn’t a past to bring up, and even if there is, unless you can remember it you cannot bring it up. I am not in favour of people keeping score of the malfeasance practised against them, even when it hurts. Letting go is liberating in ways that cataloguers and recorders of the misdeeds of others can not comprehend. Forgetting such wrongs is the best thing we can do to improve our lives. Elephants’ memories are become the stuff of legend, due but recent research suggests that elephants use their long-term memory mainly for harbouring grudges and waiting to get even. That sounds altogether too human, but they are known to attack towns and villages in revenge for offences against them by their inhabitants in the long ago. Then there is the story of the lady who spoke to her enemy in the foyer of the church saying, “Since I am a Christian, I forgive you. But I have an eternal memory!” It is doubtful if the fellow who trod on her metaphorical corns ever felt the grace of her forgiveness. Wordsworth put his memory to better use – sometimes – as when he remembered the panoply of daffodils stretching along the shoreline of a lake. He was less florid when recalling his niece who, like his sister, ‘has a methodistical turn of mind; and sailed to America to ‘join those wretched religionists,’ the Mormons. Most of us have at least one memory that makes us teary-eyed when we dredge it up from the dark pit of our remembrance, and perhaps another that, like Wordsworth’s niece, makes us fume. When I was – according to my publicity material – ‘Britain’s top country singer’ Ray Buck, I saw the often devastating effect of almost-forgotten memories when elderly ladies in my audiences remembered their sweethearts who died in battles and did not return from the War when I sang, “You’ll Never Know Dear How Much I Love You,” after reminding them that many had loved deeply one who had been lost before they married their present spouses. So there are good memories and bad memories, happy memories and sad memories, memories that make us angry, and memories that make us laugh. Without memory, music and poetry would not work because we would only hear an isolated note or word and be unable to connect it to what had gone before to make the whole sing and speak to our souls. Memory serves even more basic functions such as remembering the schedule of our daily rounds and reminding us of where to go and when. When this capacity is reduced, we become dysfunctional, confused, lost, and increasingly irrelevant. Memory also reminds us where the bones are – or where they should be. After all this talk of elephants, forgiving, daffodils, lost love, music, lyricism, and routine, the Bones Protocol might seem irrelevant until the connection is explained. It has to do with the memory of my little Border Collie, Frankie, a five-year-old genius with a memory that makes elephants look like forgetful boobies. The story begins with Montana’s house builder extraordinary, Bob Brown, and ends with Chicago Cubs’ rising talent, Jake Fox. Frankie’s interest in big bones began when Bob, having slaughtered a buffalo our last winter in Montana, drove up in his rig and dumped the bones in the snow at the back of our house. Frankie thought all her birthdays had come in one go and set about stripping the meat from the bones with gusto, an occupation that lasted her for several weeks. Although Bob didn’t bring any more bones to us, the arrival of his black rig on our property was always the signal for Frankie to run to the back of his truck and sniff to see whether he was carrying more cargo for her. The next summer we quit Montana and headed for the Arizona desert. I assumed that Frankie had forgotten her benefactor, Bob “Buffalo Bone” Brown and his tasty delivery, but I was wrong. The first time Jake showed up at the dog park in an identical rig to Bob Brown’s, Frankie jumped from the back of our rig and hightailed it across the car park to see if the truck was carrying bones. It wasn’t, but that does not stop her from making a beeline towards Jake’s pickup truck every time it shows up in the park car park. That she remembers the model of a truck she has not seen for over two and a half years, and the bones that came three years ago with sufficient force to cause her to fly like the wind to check it out just in case, is a tribute to her wonderful canine memory. However trivial this might seem to some, it should also be remembered that Frankie does not bear grudges and is quick to forgive, and even quicker to forget. Not only does she fly to the back of Jake’s truck, but if he has not arrived when we get there she zips along to the place where he parks as if expecting him to descend from heaven bearing bony blessings for her. There is a lesson in Frankie’s behaviour that is a timely reminder at this special time of year to help us keep in mind that Forgiveness and Blessing was born in a manger in a far off country to induce us to forgive and forget and be reconciled to each other, and to use our blessed function of memory as a gift to others, not as a weapon against them, and to remember with the enthusiasm of a Border Collie the time when a blessing came in winter, and to inspire us to remember the vehicle for the blessings he delivered to a broken world, and to keep us mindful of his anticipated return. My Christmas prayer for the world is that we will receive His gifts as warmly and enthusiastically as Frankie received the bones, and that we will look for further blessings from the same source with the human version of her simple faith, believing that His heavenly gifts will continue to flow for the remainder of our days. Jesus Christ King of Heaven Copyright © 2006 – Ronnie Bray ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | 
