I think we tend to believe that people and places stop existing when they stop existing to us.

At least, I do.

I like to think of all the people I have known but don’t know anymore as frozen in time, still just right where I left them. Having left the place where I grew up, I like to think of it as unchanged, too.

It’s as if my past life is a movie, and everything that has ever happened to me is just a scene.

And if I were to return to all the right places, I would find those scenes playing out on a loop like they do in my mind. I would be able to pause and fast-forward, and see things from a new perspective. It allows me to believe in some semblance of continuity for all the moments we have lost—and all the moments that have lost us.

But really, the only real continuity is the kind we carry. The kind we house in our bodies, in the spaces between our bones where memories live.

We remember things that are only real because we remember them. I think that’s why the people we have loved stay with us for so long. For forever, probably. A childhood best friend, a first love, a college roommate—they all consist of collections of moments that only two people knew of and only two people will ever remember.

And then, there are places.

Places that formed some piece of you that you still carry. I like to think that I could return to my college campus and find it just as I left it. I imagine that I would have classes to get to and time in between to grab a coffee and read in the sun, dreaming of the life I am living now.

I imagine that I could walk into my old favorite café and that the barista would still know my name and order. It would smell the same and look the same and feel the same and I would be the same, too.

Of course, none of these things can be true

Our friends, family, and spouses are the threads we use to stitch ourselves into something greater—into a fabric that feels elusive and ephemeral, yet somehow enduring. Through them, we create the illusion—and maybe even the reality—that something of us will last, that we are part of a story still unfolding, even after we’re no longer there to witness it.

But more than memories, we are the continuity.

We are the mosaics of our lives, the pieced-together proof that life has happened to us and is happening still. All of our experiences, all of the people and places we knew, remain a part of us, even if they are otherwise gone.

Our existence is an homage to our ancestors, and our homes, and the trees we grew up with. It’s one of my favorite concepts, this idea of being a living, breathing amalgamation of everything we have ever known and loved.

We are everything that has ever known and loved us, too.