John Ratcliff's Weblog

I am about to embark on a series of web log posts that are going to be a little bit different. I know who some of my audience is. It is John Obershelp, David Metzener, and some other old and dear friends. However, the main audience for the upcoming posts is myself. I know I'm writing a 'public' journal, but it feels pretty private at times. With a New Year we each tend to do some amount of self-reflection and introspection and I'm no exception. Starting with a dream a few days ago I am, at least temporarily, consumed with a topic which has been a burning interest to both myself and my good friend John Obershelp for some time.

The subject I speak of is 'memory'. Neither John or I have one. John is worse off than I am, and I'm pretty bad. Our memory difficulties include short-term, mid-term, and long term. We both feel like there is a hole in our 'whole' lives. Beginning to end. We feel robbed of our own lives to some extent, because we are robbed of our memories. I know this is not a completey uncommon problem. However, when you have friends who remember where they went to school when they were children, the names of their childhood friends and classmates, and can even remember the names of other people, or what they did as recently as a few years ago, you feel a great deal of jealousy for their good fortune. When you cannot remember people's names you appear to be very rude and it's an endless source of embarassment.

Personally, I might remember in the vaugest of terms what I was doing in a particular portion of a particular decade, but its dodgy at best. For whole years of my childhood I don't remember where I lived, where I went to school, or any events, major, or minor, that happened in my life. I know John has this same problem.

This also raises some spiritual questions of identity in all of this. Who are we? Are we 'who we were' when we can't even remember any of it? When we look at an old photograph do we receive recognition, or the blank stare of a stranger to our minds? Is it possible to remember what we have forgotten? Is it lost forever or only hidden in our subconscious, waiting for it to be coaxed out again? These are some fairly important questions I think.

Since the impetus for this current quest came from a dream, therein lies also the promise of a memory locked and buried away waiting to yet be rediscovered. I know that I have had dreams where, within the context of the dream, I had *perfect* recall of long ago past events; something my conscious mind can't even imagine achieving. Different people place varying importance on their dreams. I place a great deal of importance on mine.

I have one recurring character in my dreams, and that is a woman named Myriam. She is the first woman I ever loved, and I was bound to her for many years. However, when I got married to my first wife, she was jealous of my close friendship with this woman, and she forbid me to continue my contact with her. This turned out to be one of the greatest regrets in my life, because I agreed. Many years later, when I had divorced my first wife, I attempted to find Myriam again. This is a long, and somewhat interesting tale to tell, but too long for this blog post to go into. Since that time I have had recurring dreams featuring this woman, and in them her personality and my memory of her is always extremely well realized. That I lost contact with her, and broke a bond of friendship that meant as much to me as any relationship I have had in my life, has been a sore spot for almost 20 years. Several years ago I finally managed to contact Myriam. I sent a letter forwarded via the alumnus association of our old college. She replied kindly, but made it quite clear she had absolutely no interest in re-establishing any kind of a relationship. During our friendship we had some very positive experiences, and some very negative ones. Because of her memory of the negative experiences, and the new life she had made for herself, she wanted to leave things the way they were. I have honored her request, and have not further contacted her since then. However, the dreams still come. These are not dreams of passion, and these aren't dreams that occur on a nightly basis. This is something that happens once, perhaps, in two years. However, the dreams are so vivid, and so real, and bring back a flood of feelings and memories from a time long ago that it ends up affecting me for days on end.

Since I can't contact Myriam, it raised the question in my mind of other people I was close to around that time, that I had lost contact with. Maybe one of them could jog some memory loose? I vauguely recalled that I once had these friends in college who were very kind to me. Two young women, who were close friends themselves, befriended me and let me into their lives. That's it. That is the sum total memory I have from a three year close relationship to two women who were my best friends at the time. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad and pathetic. After a long drive thinking about these things I fired up the internet when I got home to see if I could use it's power as a ludicrous excuse for a memory. I went to classmates.com as a starting point. The thing is, I never went to high school with these young ladies. We all went to East Central College together, which isn't even listed in classmates.com. I seemed to recall that they had gone to high school in Washington, Missouri. I spent some time searching through the names of people who had graduated high school the same year as I. Eventually I came across the name 'Marquart', and that started ringing in my brain. It sounded 'right'. This memory ended up spawning another. I sort of thought, maybe, that they hadn't attended public high school but had gone to the Catholic high school instead. So, next, I started searching the names of that school. Eventually I stumbled across a couple of 'Marquarts' that had graduated high school in 1979. I sent classmates email to both of them, and a few hours later I got a hit. Donna Marquart, now Donna Owens, responded to my email as follows:

"OH MY GOD!!! JOHN I AM THE SAME DONNA MARQUART-- GARY IS A COUSIN-- BRENDA FRANKENBURG AND I USE TO RUN TOGETHER!!! PLEASE SEND YOUR EMAIL ADDY AS I WOULD LIKE TO CHAT LONGER-- YOU HAVE BEEN IN MY THOUGHTS LATELY!! IF YOU ARE MARRIED AND YOUR WIFE IS JEALOUS--I WILL UNDERSTAND BUT I WOULD LIKE TO CATCH UP ABOUT LOST TIME!- THANK YOU FOR EMAILING ME!
DONNA "

I found the line about having a 'jealous' wife more than just a little bit ironic. I called Donna and she began to fill me in on what my memory had lost. She recalled conversations, events, and details that literally boggle my mind. She even told an anecdote about how we all watched the Princess Diana wedding together, and how we watched a soap opera together every day in the student lounge. If you had asked me, I would have sworn under oath I had never watched a soap opera in my life, or watched a princesses wedding. Donna even started rattling off the plot line and character names of the soap opera we were all watching at the time. She told a story about how they had all thrown me a birthday party, and more, and more, and more.

I am thrilled that I got hold of an old friend and I am in shock that she could remember all of these details from my life. However, it raises some really imporatant questions. Is there any value in reconnecting with these lost friends that I can't even consciously remember? Can I get my memory back? I know how important friends are, and I know how much work it is to maintain a friendship of youth throughout the years. I have done that with John Obershelp, but many others have slipped through my fingers. And no loss is greater than the friendship I had with Myriam.

I'll update this blog, perhaps in the future, with any progress I might make in regaining my memory. At the minimum maybe I will get some new anecdotes, and maybe even reconnect with old and dear friends.

My current wife (or as I like to refer to her as my 'permanent' wife) Terry, is so much the non-jealous type that it turns out she actually found all of the photographs of all of my old girlfriends and put them in an album! It was in this holy relic that I found my one and only last remaining photograph of Myriam, as well as several of Brenda and Donna. Additionally, there were other photographs of my lost youth that make me feel a great deal of nostalgia and wistfullness for the lost memory of friends and experiences gone by.

Here they are, relics of a lost youth. These are images scanned in from sometimes ancient and tattered photographs. Once here on the web they can be shared with friends, preserved, and hopefully spark more memories in the future. Since Donna was the start of this, I will begin with the photographs I found of her and Brenda.

Donna Marquart Owens

Brenda Frankenberg

Brenda and Donna together

And, because a website should be interactive, here is a current photo of Donna I just received by email a minute ago. With Donna is her 7 year old son Eddie.

She is kind, she is quiet, she is shy, and she is strong. I remember her personality clearly but nothing more. Who is she?

Her name is Cindy Lape. I didn't remember that, it's written on the back of the photograph. Now seeing the photo, I recall that I took her to her high school prom when she was only 18 and I was, like, 22 or something. Since I never went to my high school prom I thought it would be a kick. I can't remember much else, like how we met even. But I remember she was very sweet, and I was a complete gentleman. At least, I think that's what I remember

One of my few true high school friends. I didn't even need the photograph to remember him, this is Eric Ronsick and his high-school sweetheart wife Linda. They just celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary, and today, January 1st, is Rick's birthday. Eric lives in Kentucky now, so not a lot of opportunity to go over and knock on his door. However, the next time he comes home to visit family, perhaps we can go out fishing together.

This ends the section of photographs that resonates with the time I spent the first two years immediately after high school. I don't think five or six photographs alone is going to do a whole lot to reconstruct several years of memory. But, I suppose, it's a start.

Here are a few photographs from the period of the early 80's, the first few years I spent after college. They feature my best friend John Obershelp, who is also memory impaired. I hope he enjoys them as much as I do.

John Obershelp and I at my first wedding. Perhaps I should have taken the whole thing a bit more seriously?

John Obershelp and my pet cat

John Obershelp and some person I don't know. Most of these photographs remain because of one time when I had bought a polaroid camera and snapped a series of spontaneous pictures. These are the only photographs I have that represent years of my life. A time when I went to Europe twice and also travelled much of the United States. Since my only record is a malfunctioning memory, it sucks I didn't take more pictues. John and I spent two weeks skiing Kitzbuel Astria and visiting Germany and have no photographs as a record of the trip!

Ellen Chenoweth. A woman I was involved with for a while. I did not treat her well at all. I wish I could contact her just to say I'm sorry.

Ruth and I on our infamous 'date' in New Orleans. The 'Ruth' story has been my most famous anecdote now for almost 20 years. Ask me about it sometime.

Fast forwarding a few years here are two photographs I have of John Obershelp and his lovely wife Alisa when they attended a murder mystery party I threw. John and Alisa dressed fabulously.

This photograph is from that same party. I am curious why John and that lady are eyeing each other behind Alisa's back as she reads from her script.

David Metzener reading from his script at the murder mystery party

David Metzener and Mark Glaenzer standing in the background. Both at the murder mystery party

This last sequence of pictures is completely self-indulgent and probably of little to no interest to anyone but my closest friends. I am including a series of pictures of myself, in roughly chronological order. This human being, theoretically, is 'me', even though I don't remember him. Even though none of the atoms in my body today are the same ones that were there when those pictures were taken. He is a stranger to me in every way execpt how much he looks like the son I named after myself. When I look at this skinny youth I can only offer up one possible theory. Perhaps fat cells impede memory? I weigh almost a 100 pounds more today than any of these pictures taken of me twenty years ago. Perhaps if I were to lose a 100 pounds my memory would return, no longer blocked by this dense body of matter? It's a thought. We all make New Years resolutions to lose weight. It's a fine aspiration. However, in over 20 years I have only lost a substantial amount of weight twice. I would like to lose weight, to improve my health, to look better and feel better about myself, and so that I could engage in some of the physical activities I used to enjoy like snow and water skiing. We will see what the year holds. If removing fat can improve memory, I'm all for it. Hey, at least I've got my hair.