There’s only so much we can hold in our feeble meat brains.

That’s why generations lose things. They slough off language and stories and places they loved, all to make way for the riches the present holds.

After three generations we have forgotten even the names of those who went before. There are too many of them, and the tangle of who they all knew and loved and what they ate and thought and felt is too heavy to carry into the future.

But that’s why there are people like us who remember for all of you. We trail the line like pack mules, our satchels full of your discards. Hungry and starving and grateful for what you no longer want. We pass it back and back to the back of the line, long after any of us are gone, not really knowing why. Only knowing “this might be important,” and we stuff it into the sack and press on.