Bouncy Balls and Eternal Halls

"I went to a funeral once."
That's how I started my first paragraph of my second project. I want to write something about my great-grandpa and hopefully capture a little bit of who he was through the piece. But I realized very quickly how nearly impossible it is to capture who someone was using nothing but a child's memories. Trying to write who this man was on a piece of paper is like trying to catch a bucketful of smoke. (Hold on, because this is where the cool title ties in.)
I remember this time as a little kid, we were staying in a hotel with my dad's side of the family for our Christmas get-together. In my grandpa's mind, staying at the Ramada was much better than going to anyone's house. Anyway, I had this bouncy ball, and I carried it around in my pocket over the couple of days we had gotten together for the holiday, taking it out now and again to bounce as I walked. Occasionally, it would deflect off a rough spot in the thin carpet and skip away down the hall, and I would chase after it, bent over like someone attempting to scoop up a loose baby chick. After a while, I just stopped chasing it because I started to feel pretty foolish. I knew eventually the ball would stop and I could catch up to it and pick it up again. But what if the ball never did stop? What if it bounced down a hall that never ended?
I think sometimes writing from memory is like that. You can't wait for the ball to stop and then go pick it up and examine it. Sometimes with memory, all you have is that bent-over hobbling run, trying desperately to catch the ball but getting nothing more than the glimpses of it, now and again a brief touch as it bounces and skips right through your fingers.
And that, Great Grandpa, is why I'm worried about this story. It's because every year, you skip a little further away from me. I hope you like what I write.