Alone in the Park: Updated
Forget-me-nots
A year or so back I was sitting in the park, Hemming Plaza, eating my lunch. I had bought a hot dog, chips and Sprite from the nearby vendor and was just preparing to chow down. My mind was going over the state of my personal life.
I had just been sent reeling by the revelation of my Ex’s serious involvement with a new guy. They were living together and talking about marriage. I had just finally begun dating again and here she was living with a new guy AND getting all engaged.
Who was this guy who got her to so easily commit to him, something I had tried to do for YEARS?
What the hell was I doing wrong?
Where was I heading in my life?
When would I get there?
Why did HER happiness bother me so much?
How could she have so easily forgotten what we were…what we had… what was good?
It felt like she had moved on TOO easily. Made me feel like I meant nothing. I couldn’t let go of that. That she could let go and made it look… like we… were… nothing. I was an acquaintance at best, it seemed. I couldn’t NOT think about her and she had to be REMINDED I existed. She acted like I was just another “guy she fucked” and couldn’t forget how wonderful we could be together.
We weren’t perfect. Not all the time… but when we were “on”, it couldn’t be beat. Too much else got in the way and I couldn’t forget a single moment of it all. I remembered how it felt kissing her the first time.
And the last.
I remembered the fights and the nights filled with laughter.
I remembered her coming to be with me after my dad died and I remembered the infamous “dead one” comment that she never let me live down.
I remembered finding out she had slept with ANOTHER of my friends. I swear Kevin seems to be the only guy friend I had at the time she DIDN’T sleep with. Sure, we weren’t dating any of the times she did it but still… it’s the principle of the thing!
And now I find out she had met, moved in with and started talking marriage with a guy she had only had time to know for about 2 months. It took me YEARS just to get her to THINK about living together and here was this guy moving into HER house.
Why can’t I let go?
Why do I have to remember what she so easily forgot?
Why do I have to remember her when she obviously doesn’t remember me?
All of this and more came flooding into my mind as I sat there in the park. I just had to get away from work after finding out about the engagement.
I had to breathe.
It was then I noticed a woman, mid to late sixties, sitting across from me. She sat there looking down at a tiny bouquet in her hands as the petals fell, one by one, and I could see her lips moving. I wasn’t sure what they were but they seemed to be short, simple words. Since I was in need of something to get my mind off MY pain, I figured sharing someone ELSE’S would do the trick so I walked over to her and introduced myself.
“Hello, my name’s William, mind if I sit here?”
She took a moment before lifting her eyes up to meet mine, thought for a moment more and then gestured slightly with her head. “Sure,” she said in a hushed tone. “My name’s Marie,” she added after I had gotten comfortable.
Marie looked back down at her flowers as another petal fell. Again I could see her lips move but my new vantage point didn’t make it any easier to figure out the words. Before I had a chance to ask her, she began to speak.
“My husband’s name is Arthur,” she began, “and he’s the most wonderful man in the world. Whenever I was feeling even the slightest bit ill, Arthur would be home to take care of me. He’d cook for me and make sure I had enough blankets. If I wanted to go somewhere, he’d always be ready to go with me… not just take me but go WITH me. From the moment we met he never let me believe for one second that he didn’t love me.”
She stopped and looked around. I tried to follow her gaze to see what had got her attention but could only see a young man, younger than me, sitting at a table about 30 feet away from us. Marie stared at him a moment and then looked back down as another petal fell. Again her lips mouthed a few short words. She looked up at me. Through me. It felt as if she was using her eyes to force her next words into my brain.
“I remember going to bed every night next to him and waking up in the morning. I remember the joy his presence brought me because I was lucky enough to find the perfect one for me and have him see the same in me. I can remember every Christmas, anniversary, birthday,” she hesitated, broke her gaze to look down but no petal moved, then returned, “I remember every day and night with Arthur.”
The tears forming in her eyes were bringing some from mine. Within moments the tears were streaming down her face. Her bottom lip quivered and the shaking of her hands caused more of the petals to fall. I reached my hand out and touched her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She composed herself as best she could but avoided looking at me. She looked at the man across the way and then back to the flowers as she placed them beside her. “Now when I go to see him I have to have a nurse explain to him who I am and why I’m there. I have to meet him… for the first time… every day. For him, he acts like he’s making a new friend and enjoys the conversations. He enjoys telling me about his childhood and his old friends and the like; stories I’ve heard a million times before I’ve now heard a million times more. For him, it’s a new experience. For me, it’s a reminder of what I had and what I don’t. While I get to meet him and talk to him and be with him, I will never be able to be with my husband ever again. Not the man who WAS my husband. He is gone and with him… US. I am the one who remembers what we had and were and I have to keep it inside so that I can still enjoy the time I have left with him.”
Marie stood up and I joined her. She straightened her dress, and turned to me before saying her final parting words, “Why do I have to remember him if he doesn’t remember me?” With that she clasped my hand, kissed me on the cheek and left.
I stood there and watched her slowly make her way to a car that must’ve just pulled up. The faces of those inside told me they were kin. I knew Marie would be putting on her happy face and telling all about her time with her husband.
I sat quietly, letting the tears air dry, until curiosity again got the better of me. I got up and walked over to the young man at the table that had gotten Marie’s attention. As I neared him I could see he was in his very early twenties. He was in slacks and a button shirt, neatly pressed, but his tie was slightly loosened. I waited a moment for him to look at me. “Hello, my name’s William,” I said extending my hand. “Mind if I join you?”
“Hey,” he replied. “Mark,” he continued, shaking my hand.
His voice was a lot deeper than I expected for such a young man. He certainly wasn’t tall enough to warrant such a rich bass. The voice had a raspy quality to it that made me instantly picture him standing on stage in a smoke filled room either singing the blues or reading angry poetry.
“What brings you to the park, Mark?” I smiled at the rhyme. He smiled back but didn’t say too much. I figured he was sizing me up so I opened my stance and leaned forward just a hair more to show my interest was genuine.
“Karen,” he said.
“Karen?”
“Yeah, her name was Karen.”
The way he said it told me he expected that to mean something to me; probably because it meant so much to him. He grabbed the seat of the bench so tightly his knuckles went white for a moment. He began to rock a little and I could see the skin around his eyes turn a shade redder.
“Karen is… WAS my girlfriend.” The need for correction caused him pain. I could relate given what brought ME to the park. “She was so beautiful and funny and smart and, well…” He paused and lifted his hands from their vice-like grip and grabbed at the air as if trying to seize the words floating before him but gave up and simply said, “EVERYTHING.”
“She sounds wonderful,” I said.
“God, she was.” Mark smiled a broad smile, a smile of memory. “She used to come by my parents’ house JUST to say good morning before school. She’d run late some days because we’d talk too long and miss the bus.
“In college, she’d come by my classes anytime she didn’t have one, too, and wait for me. Don’t get me wrong, I did the same thing. She’d leave me notes on my car saying she loved me and missed me or just a little smiley face.” Mark chuckled. “I’d… I’d leave her notes simply saying ‘booga booga booga’.” Mark turned to look at me and saw the lack of full comprehension on my face. “It was an in-joke, came from that movie Porky’s 3. You ever see it?”
“Yeah, I saw it. The fake zombie thing?” I couldn’t remember if it was the second or third one actually. I knew it wasn’t the first Porky’s but suspected it was actually the second one. Seemed pointless to debate it since I couldn’t exactly prove my beliefs.
“Yeah, we laughed so damn hard at that so it became our thing. Well, MY thing, anyway.” Mark stared straight ahead and added, “but she loved it.”
“That’s great, I used to have a similar thing with an old girlfriend of mine.” That was true. I would simply leaves notes on Pam’s car saying ‘hubba hubba hubba’ anytime I got to see her that day so she’d know she turned me on. We were young and it was ok to still be thinking like that.
“We had a lot of things like that. We’d sit and just talk. We’d come here to this park and just sit on Sundays. It was our chance to catch up on the week,’ Mark shook his head after saying that. “It made no sense since we saw each other almost daily but never went a day without talking somehow. But those Sundays would still get filled with conversation.”
I knew I had to push him to get him to say why he was in the park THAT day since it wasn’t a Sunday. “So what happened?” I asked.
Marks eyes turned beet red. The sides started to shine as tears pooled. I could hear his breathing quicken, shallow and nasally. His hands returned to grab the bench.
“She died.”
“My god, I’m so sorry.” I suck at condolences. I don’t know how to give them and always feel phony when I try. “What happened?” When he didn’t answer right away I said, “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Car accident.” He looked to the ground on his left and his chin quivered a little. “Some dumbass drunk plowed into her car one night. Paramedics said she died on impact, no pain.”
I wanted to point out that that was a GOOD thing. At least she didn’t suffer. That should mean something, right? But I couldn’t say it. I felt silly for thinking it once Mark said what he did.
“No pain? What the hell does that even mean? She died, for crissakes! Can they truly KNOW she had no pain?” His voice was rising with each sentence until he was nearly shouting, “NO!” I realized that’s why his voice sounded the way it did. He had cried and yelled himself hoarse.
I tried to utter a word of understanding and agreement but it never made it out, not fully formed.
“And even months later can they still tell me she felt no pain? And… and… and what about everyone else?” Mark looked me in the eyes with a stare that reminded me of Marie’s but with so much more intensity that I was waiting for my head to explode. The tears were no longer contained by his eyes and came streaming down his face, staining his shirt. “She died,” he said, “but it killed ME.”
I nodded and let him continue.
“She’s gone. I can only hope and pray she truly doesn’t feel any pain. I’m feeling enough for us both. The idea that she may be hurting just makes it worse. But then I hear my mom and our friends telling me how she’s not ‘really’ gone. ‘As long as you remember her, she’ll always be with you,’ they say.”
Mark stood up quickly and turned, gesturing by swinging his left arm around to draw my attention to the expanse of the park. “So according to them,” he said, “as long as I remember her, she’ll be right here.
“With me.
“In this park.
“Do you see her? I sure don’t but they swear to me she’s here. And it’s not because I don’t remember her.” Mark quieted down and dropped his arms to his sides.
“I remember every single thing about her. I can’t forget a moment. She haunts my life because the only thing I CAN forget at times is that all I have are memories. That’s it, man. Memories of what we had. I spend all my time thinking about her and smiling at who and how she was and then I get excited and want to see her.” At that, he sat back on the bench.
Mark swallowed hard and used his sleeve to wipe his face. “And that’s when reality sets in.”
“I know, Mark,” I said. “Losing a loved one is hard. It does get a little easier but it takes time.”
Mark turned his head only slightly enough so he could make eye contact. “I know but it’s not about being able to ‘handle’ it. It’s that I WANT to forget. I want to not remember her. I want to move on because it’s too damn hard to be responsible for so much. She’s gone, she’s not coming back and yet I can’t forget her. I try and feel guilty about that as if it means I didn’t… DON’T love her.”
“It wouldn’t mean that, Mark.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what it means. If I did love her I wouldn’t want to forget. I just can’t deal with being the only one who does.”
“You’re not… her family,” I pointed out before being cut off.
“Her family didn’t know her like I do. The only person who can remember her like that, like the young woman she was becoming and not the growing daughter or the sister or the student or whatever,” he waited a beat, “is me.”
“It’s my job. My responsibility. And I can’t deal with it. I can’t be the keeper of her memory, not alone. Why do I have to remember us when she can’t? Without her, there is no US.”
I reached my hand out and touched his shoulder, squeezing a little. “It’s ok, Mark. Really it is. It’s ok to feel that way. Death is always hardest on the living. It’s that whole unknown factor of it all.”
“The what?”
“It’s like when you’re trying to talk to someone on the phone but your connection is weak on your end but not theirs. They can hear you fine but you come through a bit staticy.”
“Uh huh,” Mark said, obviously not sure of my point yet.
“Well, the other person knows both sides of the conversation while you can only know yours with any certainty. In the case of a loved one passing on, they know what is happening. Whether it’s heaven, nothing or something we haven’t thought of, they KNOW it. We, on the other hand, have to not only deal with the loss and the sadness but also the confusion and the simple fact that we have no clue what happened to them. They are simply gone and we aren’t. We are expected to move on and deal with the absence and mystery.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, “it’s like we get three days from work to adapt to a changed world and then get back to work.”
“Exactly, death only affects those close to the deceased. Everyone else is either trying to empathize or is trying to not think about it. We feel bad for bringing them down but feel angry that they don’t want to give us OUR time to mourn. And at the same time, we are left with so many reminders of them that sometimes the day-to-day living becomes unbearable.”
Mark sat still. He had folded his hands across his stomach, eyes closed. “I love her.”
“I have no doubts, Mark.”
“I will always love her.”
“I know.”
“But why do I have to remember everything? Why can’t I feel ok about letting go?”
I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him to me. Neither of us cared about maintaining any sort of manly image. We simply hugged. I patted his back and said in a soft voice, “Because you don’t want to let go yet.” I could feel his arms tighten around me and felt his body shaking from the crying, silent though it was. “And you don’t HAVE to let her go until you’re ready.”
He leaned back up and took a deep breath. I did the same. He sniffed and wiped his eyes again. I knew my lunch was almost over and he obviously needed to get somewhere himself.
“Thank you,” Mark said.
“No, Mark,” I replied, “thank you. You’ve helped me.”
He got up off the bench and turned towards City Hall. “I need to go.”
“Me, too.”
Mark walked off and made it about halfway to the street before turning back to wave. I returned the wave and nodded.
I miss Pam.
I miss many people at this point in my life.
I miss too many.
And missing is simply remembering without opportunity to build new memories, whether permanent or not. It’s a pain of loss and a burden of information. It doesn’t matter if the person is still around but doesn’t know you or doesn’t want to know you or, worse, isn’t around anymore at all, in the long run it’s all about the pain of remembering.
Remembering is looking back on everything that happened and deciding if you want to focus on what time you had or what time you didn’t. Frustration is when you think you have all the time in the world. Regret is when you realize you didn’t. We all have our reasons for not letting go when everyone else wants us to. That day I learned the only important thing about letting go is to do it when you’re ready. To force it causes stress and feelings of guilt. To let it control you simply makes your life a sacrifice to nothing. We all just need to find a balance and to realize that not forgetting yourself isn’t the same thing as forgetting someone else.
A year or so back I was sitting in the park, Hemming Plaza, eating my lunch. I had bought a hot dog, chips and Sprite from the nearby vendor and was just preparing to chow down. My mind was going over the state of my personal life.
I had just been sent reeling by the revelation of my Ex’s serious involvement with a new guy. They were living together and talking about marriage. I had just finally begun dating again and here she was living with a new guy AND getting all engaged.
Who was this guy who got her to so easily commit to him, something I had tried to do for YEARS?
What the hell was I doing wrong?
Where was I heading in my life?
When would I get there?
Why did HER happiness bother me so much?
How could she have so easily forgotten what we were…what we had… what was good?
It felt like she had moved on TOO easily. Made me feel like I meant nothing. I couldn’t let go of that. That she could let go and made it look… like we… were… nothing. I was an acquaintance at best, it seemed. I couldn’t NOT think about her and she had to be REMINDED I existed. She acted like I was just another “guy she fucked” and couldn’t forget how wonderful we could be together.
We weren’t perfect. Not all the time… but when we were “on”, it couldn’t be beat. Too much else got in the way and I couldn’t forget a single moment of it all. I remembered how it felt kissing her the first time.
And the last.
I remembered the fights and the nights filled with laughter.
I remembered her coming to be with me after my dad died and I remembered the infamous “dead one” comment that she never let me live down.
I remembered finding out she had slept with ANOTHER of my friends. I swear Kevin seems to be the only guy friend I had at the time she DIDN’T sleep with. Sure, we weren’t dating any of the times she did it but still… it’s the principle of the thing!
And now I find out she had met, moved in with and started talking marriage with a guy she had only had time to know for about 2 months. It took me YEARS just to get her to THINK about living together and here was this guy moving into HER house.
Why can’t I let go?
Why do I have to remember what she so easily forgot?
Why do I have to remember her when she obviously doesn’t remember me?
All of this and more came flooding into my mind as I sat there in the park. I just had to get away from work after finding out about the engagement.
I had to breathe.
It was then I noticed a woman, mid to late sixties, sitting across from me. She sat there looking down at a tiny bouquet in her hands as the petals fell, one by one, and I could see her lips moving. I wasn’t sure what they were but they seemed to be short, simple words. Since I was in need of something to get my mind off MY pain, I figured sharing someone ELSE’S would do the trick so I walked over to her and introduced myself.
“Hello, my name’s William, mind if I sit here?”
She took a moment before lifting her eyes up to meet mine, thought for a moment more and then gestured slightly with her head. “Sure,” she said in a hushed tone. “My name’s Marie,” she added after I had gotten comfortable.
Marie looked back down at her flowers as another petal fell. Again I could see her lips move but my new vantage point didn’t make it any easier to figure out the words. Before I had a chance to ask her, she began to speak.
“My husband’s name is Arthur,” she began, “and he’s the most wonderful man in the world. Whenever I was feeling even the slightest bit ill, Arthur would be home to take care of me. He’d cook for me and make sure I had enough blankets. If I wanted to go somewhere, he’d always be ready to go with me… not just take me but go WITH me. From the moment we met he never let me believe for one second that he didn’t love me.”
She stopped and looked around. I tried to follow her gaze to see what had got her attention but could only see a young man, younger than me, sitting at a table about 30 feet away from us. Marie stared at him a moment and then looked back down as another petal fell. Again her lips mouthed a few short words. She looked up at me. Through me. It felt as if she was using her eyes to force her next words into my brain.
“I remember going to bed every night next to him and waking up in the morning. I remember the joy his presence brought me because I was lucky enough to find the perfect one for me and have him see the same in me. I can remember every Christmas, anniversary, birthday,” she hesitated, broke her gaze to look down but no petal moved, then returned, “I remember every day and night with Arthur.”
The tears forming in her eyes were bringing some from mine. Within moments the tears were streaming down her face. Her bottom lip quivered and the shaking of her hands caused more of the petals to fall. I reached my hand out and touched her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She composed herself as best she could but avoided looking at me. She looked at the man across the way and then back to the flowers as she placed them beside her. “Now when I go to see him I have to have a nurse explain to him who I am and why I’m there. I have to meet him… for the first time… every day. For him, he acts like he’s making a new friend and enjoys the conversations. He enjoys telling me about his childhood and his old friends and the like; stories I’ve heard a million times before I’ve now heard a million times more. For him, it’s a new experience. For me, it’s a reminder of what I had and what I don’t. While I get to meet him and talk to him and be with him, I will never be able to be with my husband ever again. Not the man who WAS my husband. He is gone and with him… US. I am the one who remembers what we had and were and I have to keep it inside so that I can still enjoy the time I have left with him.”
Marie stood up and I joined her. She straightened her dress, and turned to me before saying her final parting words, “Why do I have to remember him if he doesn’t remember me?” With that she clasped my hand, kissed me on the cheek and left.
I stood there and watched her slowly make her way to a car that must’ve just pulled up. The faces of those inside told me they were kin. I knew Marie would be putting on her happy face and telling all about her time with her husband.
I sat quietly, letting the tears air dry, until curiosity again got the better of me. I got up and walked over to the young man at the table that had gotten Marie’s attention. As I neared him I could see he was in his very early twenties. He was in slacks and a button shirt, neatly pressed, but his tie was slightly loosened. I waited a moment for him to look at me. “Hello, my name’s William,” I said extending my hand. “Mind if I join you?”
“Hey,” he replied. “Mark,” he continued, shaking my hand.
His voice was a lot deeper than I expected for such a young man. He certainly wasn’t tall enough to warrant such a rich bass. The voice had a raspy quality to it that made me instantly picture him standing on stage in a smoke filled room either singing the blues or reading angry poetry.
“What brings you to the park, Mark?” I smiled at the rhyme. He smiled back but didn’t say too much. I figured he was sizing me up so I opened my stance and leaned forward just a hair more to show my interest was genuine.
“Karen,” he said.
“Karen?”
“Yeah, her name was Karen.”
The way he said it told me he expected that to mean something to me; probably because it meant so much to him. He grabbed the seat of the bench so tightly his knuckles went white for a moment. He began to rock a little and I could see the skin around his eyes turn a shade redder.
“Karen is… WAS my girlfriend.” The need for correction caused him pain. I could relate given what brought ME to the park. “She was so beautiful and funny and smart and, well…” He paused and lifted his hands from their vice-like grip and grabbed at the air as if trying to seize the words floating before him but gave up and simply said, “EVERYTHING.”
“She sounds wonderful,” I said.
“God, she was.” Mark smiled a broad smile, a smile of memory. “She used to come by my parents’ house JUST to say good morning before school. She’d run late some days because we’d talk too long and miss the bus.
“In college, she’d come by my classes anytime she didn’t have one, too, and wait for me. Don’t get me wrong, I did the same thing. She’d leave me notes on my car saying she loved me and missed me or just a little smiley face.” Mark chuckled. “I’d… I’d leave her notes simply saying ‘booga booga booga’.” Mark turned to look at me and saw the lack of full comprehension on my face. “It was an in-joke, came from that movie Porky’s 3. You ever see it?”
“Yeah, I saw it. The fake zombie thing?” I couldn’t remember if it was the second or third one actually. I knew it wasn’t the first Porky’s but suspected it was actually the second one. Seemed pointless to debate it since I couldn’t exactly prove my beliefs.
“Yeah, we laughed so damn hard at that so it became our thing. Well, MY thing, anyway.” Mark stared straight ahead and added, “but she loved it.”
“That’s great, I used to have a similar thing with an old girlfriend of mine.” That was true. I would simply leaves notes on Pam’s car saying ‘hubba hubba hubba’ anytime I got to see her that day so she’d know she turned me on. We were young and it was ok to still be thinking like that.
“We had a lot of things like that. We’d sit and just talk. We’d come here to this park and just sit on Sundays. It was our chance to catch up on the week,’ Mark shook his head after saying that. “It made no sense since we saw each other almost daily but never went a day without talking somehow. But those Sundays would still get filled with conversation.”
I knew I had to push him to get him to say why he was in the park THAT day since it wasn’t a Sunday. “So what happened?” I asked.
Marks eyes turned beet red. The sides started to shine as tears pooled. I could hear his breathing quicken, shallow and nasally. His hands returned to grab the bench.
“She died.”
“My god, I’m so sorry.” I suck at condolences. I don’t know how to give them and always feel phony when I try. “What happened?” When he didn’t answer right away I said, “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Car accident.” He looked to the ground on his left and his chin quivered a little. “Some dumbass drunk plowed into her car one night. Paramedics said she died on impact, no pain.”
I wanted to point out that that was a GOOD thing. At least she didn’t suffer. That should mean something, right? But I couldn’t say it. I felt silly for thinking it once Mark said what he did.
“No pain? What the hell does that even mean? She died, for crissakes! Can they truly KNOW she had no pain?” His voice was rising with each sentence until he was nearly shouting, “NO!” I realized that’s why his voice sounded the way it did. He had cried and yelled himself hoarse.
I tried to utter a word of understanding and agreement but it never made it out, not fully formed.
“And even months later can they still tell me she felt no pain? And… and… and what about everyone else?” Mark looked me in the eyes with a stare that reminded me of Marie’s but with so much more intensity that I was waiting for my head to explode. The tears were no longer contained by his eyes and came streaming down his face, staining his shirt. “She died,” he said, “but it killed ME.”
I nodded and let him continue.
“She’s gone. I can only hope and pray she truly doesn’t feel any pain. I’m feeling enough for us both. The idea that she may be hurting just makes it worse. But then I hear my mom and our friends telling me how she’s not ‘really’ gone. ‘As long as you remember her, she’ll always be with you,’ they say.”
Mark stood up quickly and turned, gesturing by swinging his left arm around to draw my attention to the expanse of the park. “So according to them,” he said, “as long as I remember her, she’ll be right here.
“With me.
“In this park.
“Do you see her? I sure don’t but they swear to me she’s here. And it’s not because I don’t remember her.” Mark quieted down and dropped his arms to his sides.
“I remember every single thing about her. I can’t forget a moment. She haunts my life because the only thing I CAN forget at times is that all I have are memories. That’s it, man. Memories of what we had. I spend all my time thinking about her and smiling at who and how she was and then I get excited and want to see her.” At that, he sat back on the bench.
Mark swallowed hard and used his sleeve to wipe his face. “And that’s when reality sets in.”
“I know, Mark,” I said. “Losing a loved one is hard. It does get a little easier but it takes time.”
Mark turned his head only slightly enough so he could make eye contact. “I know but it’s not about being able to ‘handle’ it. It’s that I WANT to forget. I want to not remember her. I want to move on because it’s too damn hard to be responsible for so much. She’s gone, she’s not coming back and yet I can’t forget her. I try and feel guilty about that as if it means I didn’t… DON’T love her.”
“It wouldn’t mean that, Mark.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what it means. If I did love her I wouldn’t want to forget. I just can’t deal with being the only one who does.”
“You’re not… her family,” I pointed out before being cut off.
“Her family didn’t know her like I do. The only person who can remember her like that, like the young woman she was becoming and not the growing daughter or the sister or the student or whatever,” he waited a beat, “is me.”
“It’s my job. My responsibility. And I can’t deal with it. I can’t be the keeper of her memory, not alone. Why do I have to remember us when she can’t? Without her, there is no US.”
I reached my hand out and touched his shoulder, squeezing a little. “It’s ok, Mark. Really it is. It’s ok to feel that way. Death is always hardest on the living. It’s that whole unknown factor of it all.”
“The what?”
“It’s like when you’re trying to talk to someone on the phone but your connection is weak on your end but not theirs. They can hear you fine but you come through a bit staticy.”
“Uh huh,” Mark said, obviously not sure of my point yet.
“Well, the other person knows both sides of the conversation while you can only know yours with any certainty. In the case of a loved one passing on, they know what is happening. Whether it’s heaven, nothing or something we haven’t thought of, they KNOW it. We, on the other hand, have to not only deal with the loss and the sadness but also the confusion and the simple fact that we have no clue what happened to them. They are simply gone and we aren’t. We are expected to move on and deal with the absence and mystery.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, “it’s like we get three days from work to adapt to a changed world and then get back to work.”
“Exactly, death only affects those close to the deceased. Everyone else is either trying to empathize or is trying to not think about it. We feel bad for bringing them down but feel angry that they don’t want to give us OUR time to mourn. And at the same time, we are left with so many reminders of them that sometimes the day-to-day living becomes unbearable.”
Mark sat still. He had folded his hands across his stomach, eyes closed. “I love her.”
“I have no doubts, Mark.”
“I will always love her.”
“I know.”
“But why do I have to remember everything? Why can’t I feel ok about letting go?”
I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him to me. Neither of us cared about maintaining any sort of manly image. We simply hugged. I patted his back and said in a soft voice, “Because you don’t want to let go yet.” I could feel his arms tighten around me and felt his body shaking from the crying, silent though it was. “And you don’t HAVE to let her go until you’re ready.”
He leaned back up and took a deep breath. I did the same. He sniffed and wiped his eyes again. I knew my lunch was almost over and he obviously needed to get somewhere himself.
“Thank you,” Mark said.
“No, Mark,” I replied, “thank you. You’ve helped me.”
He got up off the bench and turned towards City Hall. “I need to go.”
“Me, too.”
Mark walked off and made it about halfway to the street before turning back to wave. I returned the wave and nodded.
I miss Pam.
I miss many people at this point in my life.
I miss too many.
And missing is simply remembering without opportunity to build new memories, whether permanent or not. It’s a pain of loss and a burden of information. It doesn’t matter if the person is still around but doesn’t know you or doesn’t want to know you or, worse, isn’t around anymore at all, in the long run it’s all about the pain of remembering.
Remembering is looking back on everything that happened and deciding if you want to focus on what time you had or what time you didn’t. Frustration is when you think you have all the time in the world. Regret is when you realize you didn’t. We all have our reasons for not letting go when everyone else wants us to. That day I learned the only important thing about letting go is to do it when you’re ready. To force it causes stress and feelings of guilt. To let it control you simply makes your life a sacrifice to nothing. We all just need to find a balance and to realize that not forgetting yourself isn’t the same thing as forgetting someone else.
posted by wmjwatson at 9:47 PM
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