The Sweetness of Forgetting

by Kristin Harmel

Life changes you, even if you don’t realize it while it’s happening, and it turns out you can’t take back the years that have passed by.

Life experiences make you change if you dont want to.

“Hope, you were born to do this,” he says with his mouth full, and although I know it’s a compliment, the words hit me hard, because I never intended to do this at all. It wasn’t the life I wanted for myself, and Matt knows it. But my grandmother got sick, my mother died, and I no longer had a choice.

Life doesn't always work out as you planned it to.

I smile tightly at him. I’m allowed to feel annoyed with my daughter, but he’s not. “She’s just going through a hard time,” I say.

We always stick up for our children even if we're mad because they did something bad or wrong.

it’s terrible to see her slipping away. It’s like standing on the deck of a boat, watching the waves suck someone under, and knowing that there’s no life preserver to throw in.

Hope thinks this about Mamie when she thinking about going to visit her in the nursing home.

Maybe the lie wasn’t as wrong if it wasn’t uttered aloud.

“Because, my dear, it is good to remember that you do not always have to see something to know that it is there.”

Mamie tells Hope this as she looks at the stars.

But you never know what will happen tomorrow, or the next day. One day, one week, one month can change everything.”

‘As long as there are stars in the sky, I will love you.’ That’s what the prince in your stories always said.”

A quote by the prince in a story and the same words Anne says when she is with her great grandmother.

“There is no need to thank me. It was our duty. In our religion, we are taught, ‘Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world.’ ”

Monsigner Haddon says this to Alain when he thanked him for saving his sister Rose.

“I never understood the discord between our religions. If there is one thing I learned from the time young Rose spent with us, it is that we are all speaking to the same God. It is not religion that divides man. It is good and evil here on earth that separates us.”

He's taking about the Jewish and Muslin religion.

“I mean that love is all around us,” Alain says. “But the older we get, the more confusing it becomes. The more times we’ve been hurt, the harder it is to see love right in front of us, or to accept love into our hearts and truly believe in it. And if you cannot accept love, you can never really feel it.”

There are many kinds of love.

“It’s never too late to find true love,” he says, locking eyes with me. “You just have to keep your heart open.”

If you're not open to love, you will never find it and it won't find you.

Now I’m realizing that by always choosing the safe road, the one that was expected of me, I might have given up more than I ever understood. Had I left behind the person I was supposed to be too? Had I lost my real self somewhere along that road of doing everything right? I wonder whether there’s still time to figure things out and start playing by my own rules. Can I salvage the life I’m meant to have?

Always doing what is expected of you doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing to do…especially for yourself .

Life doesn’t work out the way we plan, but maybe it works out the way it’s supposed to after all. You know?”

You can still be happy if life doesn't turn out exactly as you planned.

You can only look forward in life. You can change the future, but not the past.”

The past is gone and cannot be changed.

“It was the war that kept us apart. The world went mad, and your grandfather was no more responsible for the outcome than I was, or than Rose was. We all made our choices. We all had to live with our regrets.”

Ted must have told Rose that Jacob died so that he could protect his family and continue the life he had made with them.

“Life gets complicated. Circumstance tears us apart. Decisions guide our fate. But your heart will always show you true north.

We have to make decisions in life that are hard but we should always listen to our heart and do what we feel is right at that time.

Life is a series of opportunities, and you have to have the courage to seize them, before the years pass you by and leave you with nothing but regrets.

Take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way because you may not have second chance.

For it is only by loving, and having the courage to be loved in return, that you can find God, who exists most of all in

as long we are good and kind, we are all serving a higher power in similar ways.

When it come down to it, all religions are based on doing good and serving "God."