Life is making memories to share, shared memories. You look hard for someone to be there so that
eventually a word, a melody, a smell is a shared reminiscence, or every new
experience causes you to need, really need to know it’s shared. You even look forward to sharing new things
you know are coming—the next season, your grandchild, a trip to the
mountains. Forty or fifty or sixty years
go by (or only two or three) and a whole catalog of memory is there.
Then suddenly you discover that those memories are all
slipping away. Worse yet, you can’t
share them, not those you’ve had or the ones anticipated. You struggle to get the words to come
out. They’re in your mind, but your
mouth won’t or can’t say them. Every day
it’s harder to understand, and finally it doesn’t matter.
You look in the mirror at the person who’s combing your hair
and shrug your shoulders at the exasperation that the style just isn’t quite
right. Or you’re surprised when you
can’t get the fork in your mouth, and then you don’t have to worry about it
because you’re not feeding yourself anymore…or wiping the toothpaste off your
chin or putting your clothes on by yourself.
These are new memories, but you’re not sharing them. You have to live them by yourself; you can’t
share them. They’re only yours.
And it really doesn’t matter.
You’re living in the memories that have been made, reliving them
because nothing will be new. Eventually
you’re drawn so deeply back into those fluid moments that they all become like
a pool of still water, and you’re sinking quietly down, one breath at a time…softly,
easily…breathing out the memories and calling them back. Until that last one doesn’t quite make the
return because it no longer matters.
Then days, weeks, months later you are looking in the
mirror, combing your hair, perhaps, and that routine triggers the memory and
you are the one alone in that memory.
You’ve looked for ways to share, but the music isn’t yours or it’s only
yours, or the smell simply pools in your eyes.
Something you think is new happens or you remember that day when…and you
turn to share it, and you’re surprised when you realize that you’re only
talking to the dog or an empty chair.
In the middle of the night you are roused from sleep. You are at a concert or a play or walking
down a crowded street or just having a conversation with someone. It dawns on you that you are alone in your
memories. You’ve not forgotten how to
share your life, you’ve just lost most of it, and right there in that moment
you want to shout, “Fuck cancer!”…or stroke…or whatever you want to name the
thief that has stolen it all.
But it really doesn’t matter.
