The scrapbook lies open in my lap. I don’t remember opening it. Familiar faces look up at me and I silently ask them if they remember me. They don’t answer.

I flip the pages and years pass. My father grins as he washes his car, a present he bought himself on his 40th birthday. A mid-life crisis, mom called it. We couldn’t really afford it but he bought it anyway. I look at his smile. It’s like looking into a mirror. I’ll be his age tomorrow. I don’t want to buy a car.

I turn the page and watch myself graduate high school. Each photograph sparks a memory inside me but I know that when I close the book they will all fade away again. Embers of a dying fire. I have things to do – bills to pay, a wife to pay attention to, things to write – but I can’t close the scrapbook just yet. To do so would be to admit defeat against the ravages of time.

Forty years. Fourteen thousand, two hundred and forty five days in this world. For what?

If tomorrow was my last day, how would I be remembered?