Memories - Take a Mental Picture!!

Many years ago, 32 to be exact, I was both excited and nervous about my upcoming wedding.  All the planning, the people, the details – the thought of it all coming together was overwhelming!  Being that I am not the calmest of people, those who know me understand that is probably an understatement, I was a wreck thinking of all the things that could possibly go wrong.

About two weeks before my wedding, I was watching television when a commercial for a fever blister medication, Campho-phenique, was aired.  My luck, the commercial highlighted a woman all dressed in her beautiful wedding gown, however, she suffered from a horrific, huge, protruding fever blister.  This blister transformed a most lovely bride with her beautiful hair and amazing figure into the bride of Frankenstein!  If it could turn this model of a woman into an ugly beast, oh my, I was doomed!!  Well, being the hypochondriac I am, I was certain I would have a horrific, huge, protruding, grotesque fever blister on MY wedding day!  There was no way around it…. or was there?

My cousin, Kenny, who has since passed away far too young, was a kind, thoughtful, talented dentist.  Being the brilliant young woman I was I assumed he would know a way to prevent fever blisters.  (After all, my lips were NEAR my teeth!)  I called him in a panic and asked his advice.  He tried to calm my fears, told me there was such a slim chance of my getting a fever blister on any particular day.  However, in order for me to have something in my mind, to bolster my feeling of being “in control”, he told me that perhaps if I put an ice cube to my lips for a short period of time in the morning and at night, it might help.  Kenny believed that advice would hold a placebo effect for me, he assumed, for some unknown reason, I was somewhat normal. 

However, he also added another bit of advice that was far more important to my life, a piece of advice I still take to heart at special times of even ordinary days.  Kenny told me that the wedding would fly by.  He told me to absorb all the feelings of the day, feelings from everyone there but especially from those most important to me.  In his wisdom, he told me to take a few, special, mental pictures.  His advice was to find my parents, my brothers, my closest friends and family and block out everything but the look on their faces and really take note of them at that moment.  Thanks to Kenny, I have those mental pictures in my mind.  I don’t need a photo album or any other device to see their happy faces.

As for the fever blister…well, that advice, although meant well, was naturally something I took to an absurd extreme.  I believed if a little ice twice a day would help keep a blister away, then obviously keeping ice on my lips constantly would definitely keep the blister away…. right?  Well, that’s what I did!  For four days before my wedding, whenever I was home, I kept an ice cube plastered to my lips.  Naturally, I gave myself a horrific, protruding, huge fever blister!  Yes I did!

Luckily, because it was self-imposed damage, it was only on my lip and easily concealed by lipstick.  (After I drove my Dad crazy driving around the suburbs asking every pharmacist what would take the blister away now that it was there…. Answer, nothing!)  

So, the moral of this story is two-fold.  Most importantly, take note of the now.  Physical pictures are irreplaceable and extremely important and worthwhile, but a mental picture will keep you company forever and help you remember to appreciate the “Now” as Eckert Tolle calls it, while it is happening.  The mental picture, when thought of, comes with the added bonus of the memory of the fresh emotions as they were felt at that special moment.  Without that mental exercise, I think the entire day, in retrospect, would have been a complete blur.  Instead, 32 years later, the images I concentrated on remembering are alive in my mind and can be thought of anytime and anywhere.

The second moral of the story, when talking to an insane, hypochondriac…remember, you are talking to an insane hypochondriac!