People past

I'm sitting in the dining room typing this on my laptop. I can hear my budgie scratching at the bottom of his cage. If I (loudly) call his name he chirps and jumps up onto the perch and I have his attention. He has a large enough personality to fill up the lounge and dining room, even the whole house. All of the house except for my room.

I find myself walking to my room, expecting to be greeted by the other budgie who lived in my room. She isn't there anymore, hasn't been for quite a while now, but it's funny how you miss someone in little flashes of memory, or rather "expected" memory. It's the expectation that I will hear her chirp at me that makes me miss her. I think it is the same with people too. I miss our dog too, at times, even though she is still alive. She is painfully old. She isn't the same anymore, since she got old. And I miss how she used to be.

It's a thing that I guess is an auto-response, a self-protection mechanism - remembering something/someone how they (usually) were instead of how they were before it ended. Somehow less upsetting like that, when it comes to things that really meant a lot to you.

I guess it's not only about people but experiences too. Things that you did in the past. You kinda forget the nitty gritty hard work that went into it, and remember the (happy) overall feeling you got from it. Helping out with the Treasure oil spill of 2000, well, it was shitty and stinky and dirty and cold and wet and disgusting and exhausting and FILTHY and despite all that, there is a feeling of accomplishment, of having taken part. You amusedly remember the difficulty of trying to feed an unhungry penguin.

What has this to do with people past? Nothing, as far as I can tell. I just had those on my mind now and wanted to put them down in text.