Retold, Until Rep

This morning, I was the first one aboard the USS Missouri.
For 45 minutes, it was mine alone—quiet, still, the decks whispering their stories back at me.

At the gangplank, a young museum worker gave me a safety briefing: ladders, footing, handrails.
I stood there, listening, nodding.
He had no idea I’d spent a significant part of my life at sea, five vessels in all, above and below.
I’ve lived this life he was explaining—in both cold and hot wars.

There’s something strange about listening to someone describe, step by step, the world you once called home.
You hear what matches, what doesn’t.
You measure their words against your memories.
Sometimes you smile, sometimes you wince.
And as I get older, I find myself in this place more often—hearing my own life retold by others who never lived it.

Retold, retold, until no living memory remains.
Then what?
How does society regain a living memory?
How do you relive an experience when the last sailor is gone,
when memory itself fades,
when the last voice is quiet—or worse, silenced?

Perhaps you don’t remember it, but you repeat it, re-enact it, for better or worse.
Bring the memory of life with new blood.
This museum ship tries, tries hard to tell the story of unimaginable events.
You can stand on the wood and steel of a ship, hear the words spoken,
and know the stories are still trying their best to carry forward.
While the living is gone, the echoes remain.

Society tries to bridge the gap with museums, ceremonies, books, and films.
We preserve artifacts, like the Mighty Mo herself,
to let future generations touch something of what it meant.
Yet it is never the same as lived memory.
What we gain is remembrance;
what we lose is immediacy.