I have mentioned this before- I don't like August. August has always meant "back to school". That wasn't the bad part in and of itself. It was the fact that the true meaning of the phrase was "end of summer break". Every year, an overpowering nervous energy starts to infect my life at the beginning of August. It seems to taunt me with the impending end of my summer freedom. It is accompanied by an equally powerful drive to get ready for school to start, something I actually look forward to. But the start of a new school year is not why I don't like August.

On the evening of August 27, 2008. which was the second day of school, my mother unexpectedly passed away. On August 18th, 2011, my father died in front of me in the nursing home next to the Guilbeau Road HEB. That was the Thursday before school started that year. Yep... Those two events pretty much ruined August for me. They also tainted all holidays, a subject on which I could write for months without totally explaining it.

Okay... It sounds like I have introduced my topic "Little Jimmie Baker Does Not Like August". Wrong! I am about to make a hard left turn into a whole other direction. I'm going to talk about Facebook and Timehop.

I was not one of the many people who jumped into Facebook when it first came on the scene. I actually signed up in July of 2008, about a month and a half before my mother passed away. That is a very significant fact. All of my "Mom memories" are the old fashioned kind: photos, letters, postcards, journals, mementos, and mental images. Before Facebook, nothing was keeping a history of my everyday life. In November of 2008, I actually started posting to Facebook. Since then, Facebook has kept a running history for me. It was too late to track any life events involving my mother while she was living. Three years later, in 2011, Facebook recorded a daily history of the days leading to the end of my father's life. As a result, I relive his death in great detail annually.

I'm not sure when the iPhone app Timehop first came out. I do remember downloading it and starting my account the first time I saw a post of a coworker's Facebook page with a "then and now" Timehop image. I thought it was really cool. I soon learned that I would get a quick "on this day" for every year that I was on Facebook and Twitter every single day. I have enjoyed seeing the photos. Sometimes, I am amazed to see that I was camping at the same park on the same day of several years. In fact, the history of my camping experiences is pretty well documented, as it all started after I joined Facebook.

The events that show up on Timehop can cause my heart to leap with joy inside my chest. Sometimes, they can knock me off my feet with an almost unbearable wave of grief. August has a lot of those sad days. I start seeing daily reminders of the last 18 days of my fathers life. I see when and where I took him to eat. I see the special activities I took him to to get him out of the house. I see his wonderful last trip to Llano to visit Long Ranch, where his and my mother's ashes are now spread. I see the photo I took of him grinning like a goon after I gave him his last haircut. I see my post on the 12th telling how I had Dad in the waiting room at Wilford Hall because we thought he had the flu. I see my posts over the next few days updating people on his condition from Brooke Army Medical Center. I see my post on the 17th telling about his move to hospice at Mystic Park Nursing & Rehab Center by the HEB Grocery store. Finally, I see my post on the 18th letting everyone know that he had passed.

Now, I know that some of you, if not all of you, are wondering why I would keep looking at that app. Am I some kind of a masochist? Maybe I am... in August. I'm not sure. But, that is just one short stretch of time. Most days, I am reminded of happy events. I really enjoy seeing what was happening in my life in 2008 - 2017. Besides, one thing I have learned in my old age is that we have to take the bad with the good. A little sorrowful remembrance of passed loved ones is not enough to make me want to hide from my past. My life story is what made me who I am. So, I am happy to have technology that gives me daily glimpses of my past. Believe it or not, I wish I had glimpses into my mother's last days, as well.

I will say that I hope that one day in the future, FaceBook will make it possible to go to any date from the past and see what was posted. There are times when I want to revisit a specific event or view a picture taken during one. If any of you have tried to do that using the current tools, you know how awful it is. You can go to a certain year, but then you have to scroll through miles of posts to see what you are looking for.

Well, that's all I feel like saying about this. And, since I don't have an app that gives me a quick look at my future, I need to get to bed so I can rest up and go live some of it tomorrow. There are hundreds of happy times, along with many bad ones coming up to add to my life story. I'm ready. Bring them on!