Remember to forget

Memories aren’t like atoms. Just like feelings, they cannot be seen, yet they make us the unique person that we are, they are a part of us. I know they exist; at least they appear to me sometimes, like flashes, before my eyes. I go to bed, it’s pitch black, and memories come like pouring rain.

It was the day they brought him home. And I was there to witness it, a perky little 3-year-old girl. People just kept coming in through the door, I hadn’t seen so many of them since grandpa’s 100th birthday. I was the center of attention as usual, or at least I thought I was. Even though a lot of people were around me, something didn’t feel right. I could hear my mother crying, I tried to stand up, but they wouldn’t let me, they would just ‘shush’ me, like when the news were on TV, and I was being too loud. I couldn’t see my dad. I became agitated. I saw the man with the black hat who seemed familiar and the smell of lighted incents passed through the room. They put me to sleep. The numbness stopped my crying. I had my eyes wide-open.

Thoughts were passing through my mind faster than thunder. -‘I can’t sleep without a story, actually no, I can’t sleep without HIM telling me a story. Where is he, why isn’t my aunt telling me, and why is that man here, and why are all these people here, why do they look at me with pity in their eyes. I’m mad at them, I’m mad at everyone, why couldn’t they stop it, why can they bring him back…’

I was falling in a deep, dark hole. I woke up. I look around, I’m in my bed. I look in the mirror. I’m still 16 and its late, I have to go school. And he still isn’t here. Nothing has changed. Memories are such a burden; they come after me in my dreams.

I was the youngest in my family, thus I should have been the spoilt one. Yet from that day on, I became the adult. I have been an adult since I was 3. I had always believed that the youngest child keeps the family together, and it didn’t matter if that was true or not, because from that day on, that became my truth. It was hard, but we survived it, we survived his death and moved on as a whole, as a family.