After Life

If you had to choose one memory from your life to take with you to eternity, what would it be?
After I watched After Life the first time, I pondered many hours about which memory I would take with me. I had then decided on a memory of years and years ago, when I was probably no more than four or five years old, on our way back home from a family outing one evening. The street was dark. Dad held my right hand, mom held my left. As we stepped into the light from the street light above, my sisters, walking ahead of us, disappeared into the darkness. No one was around, and I felt like it was my dad, my mom and me all to ourselves in this world. It made me happy. Taking this memory, I would forever be young, innocent, and unconditionally happy.
But now, I would choose another, in which Maria Callas sang a famed aria one night within the confines of my car, parked in an unsafe part of town. Breathing in those moments, I turned equally blind to the consequences as I was to the surroundings. No longer so young, and certainly no longer innocent, it is this memory I would still choose, even if the tears and pain that so soon followed it must also come. As someone once put it, it is the unintended and unexpected consequences of my existence.