Disptach #9
Fade
Just after my dad died, my friend Madeleine, who had also recently lost her father, gave me an enamel pin in the shape of an award ribbon. On it were the words: “Survived indescribable grief.” Too often, the item’s creator explained, the things that require the most courage on a daily basis go unrecognized, so she created her own form of acknowledgement.
Today I packed away the pin, which I’ve had displayed in my kitchen for nearly two years, and took down from the fridge handwritten notes from my dad and from Sharman for safekeeping. Lately the ink has begun to fade — memories starting to erase themselves.
I once read somewhere that every time we access a memory, we irrevocably alter its shape. While our every memory is faulty, we are best served by the ones to which we don’t continually return. But where’s the meaning-making in a memory never recalled?
Both Sharman and my dad were in my dreams last night. Sharman and I were sitting next to one another — so close, laughing over something new. With my dad, I relived a moment we both once lived together. One memory was real, and the other my mind made, but no matter; both cracked the same yearning wide open.
At first after loss, I marked the milestones. The birthdays and the Christmases, sure. And yet, the riptides were usually the ones I expected would be small waves — like the first time summer faded into fall. But this year, when fall came, the riptide that pulled me under was recalling how I felt in that first turn of the seasons, then noticing how I feel now. The distinction was its own loss. I turned the memory over and over in my mind, altering it forever.
Read prior dispatches in this series here.
