(A version of this was given as a speech at a Hospice Toronto event in June; they're good, give them money. It's a little straightforward and heavy, so if you really like reading about coffee and rock and roll music just be patient for a week or two. I struggled with putting this up, actually, but some had asked to see it, and though it's a bit squeamish to be so revealing and earnest, I thought a lot about how much braver it is to just talk about shit like this than it is to pretend it doesn't happen. Also, a really funny chain-smoking guy approached me after I read this and said something like, "You know, that was great, you really nailed it, but you made me feel like crap, so screw you." Which I thought was pretty awesome. )
As a writer, I suspect I spend a higher than average amount of time trying to—let's be honest—control memory. I can write about my memories to fix them clearly, and to make them into things I like. By using words to shape and color, to navigate and avoid, I can try my very best to make permanent the finest points and turn the lighting down on things that I do not like to dwell on. But one thing I've learned from the experience of loss is that the act of remembering does not often bend so easily to our will, and that, like the worst—and best—moments of life itself, memories crop up when we do not want them at all, or worse, at those times we feel we need them most, they may fail to come.
Though all seasons can be nostalgic, summer for me is loaded with childhood outings and the essence of cross-country roadtrips, long walks, and the adventure and potential of nights that never seem to end. But for the past two years the feeling of summer has also been loaded with the bittersweetness of gradual loss: summer is now also the season in which my husband Jeff, at 31 years old, passed away on a warm August night. That the weather that day was perfect was so strange to me, but an inseperable part of understanding how the good and bad in this world—those cycles that are magical and natural and unavoidable—will always coexist. That summer he died had been an amazing one for us: we spent months travelling and goofing off and simply being with each other, with friends, trying to appreciate all we had, by which I mean—all we had left. But despite the cloud of illness, we made the most of our time those months. And as his days became clearly shortened, remembering everything correctly became all I could think about.
I started to write things down: everything he said, the way I felt, those moments of change and fear within the hospital walls. My desire to record everything was obvious: it was a way of holding on, of staying attached to what little I had left of Jeff, and it was also a way of trying to stay attached to reality, to my own storyline. I knew this would be among the most trying and dizzying times in my life, and I somehow believed that if I didn't write things down and try to fix those memories in words for later, I might just never recover some of them at all.
I kept a laptop in the hospital while I stayed with Jeff those last days, and recorded things that doctors said as well as things that Jeff said—which towards the end of his disease process were hilariously bizarre. He said crazy things—literally crazy—that despite the sadness of their circumstance brought me great delight. "What would you like me to bring you for dinner?" I'd ask him, knowing his distaste for hospital food. "Oh," he'd pause for a moment. "A whale?"
Now how could I ever want to forget something as funny as that?
Yet the other things I wrote down at that period were more difficult. How scared I was of the days to come. The things that doctors said that angered me, that I couldn't deal with hearing yet. The things he said while in great pain. And yet all of them were important to me as part of this world I wanted to remember—it was mine, after all. Mine and his.
But in the months after Jeff died, indeed, in the years, I was surprised at how memory failed to work for me, despite my best efforts to write and remember and cherish. Almost immediately I began to feel so distant from the sweetest memories I had gone back to again and again from my years with him—they were murky when I wanted them to be clear, or there were times when I tried to go back to those good memories and then rejected them once I realized they were going to be too painful. The act of remembering had become more difficult than I had ever anticipated. Wasn't it something within my own control? Weren't the memories mine, still in there deep down, things I needed to acknowledge as what made me who I am? Why couldn't I enjoy them on my own terms, anyway?
I tried hard in those early months to remember things how and when I wanted to, and during that time I mixed the worlds of healing and remembering together. If only I could get my mental story straight, I kept thinking, I would be healing in the way that I wanted. If only I could call up the memories that gave me solace, I could be with them and feel comforted by them. Weren't we lucky, anyway? Wasn't it better to have loved?
But my thoughts worked just the same for memories I didn't want to have: If only I could walk down the street and not be hurt by the memories of being on that same street with him, I could feel like the city and my life were my own again. If only I could experience the nice things in life without them being so bittersweet, I could begin to rebuild.
But rebuilding and remembering are different, of course. Often for us to begin to rebuild after a loss, our ability to remember is shut down. Biologically. On purpose, to help us make it through the days and nights, though we may not realize it at the time. Those deep in grief may not even be able to remember their phone numbers for awhile—and it can be a horrible feeling to think that along with the loss you've suffered of a loved one, you can't even call up their memory clearly. I spent a lot of time thinking about whether I was too sad, or sad enough, or remembering too much, or too little. And in all of these moments was a key misunderstanding: I thought that remembering was something I should control.
And though remembering is indeed an act, the times it has served me best are when it has been a passive one. When I have let it direct itself. It was when I finally learned to stop searching so hard, and judging the outcome of those searches, that the process of remembering became a peaceful one. Remembering does keep us attached to the past, but one need not force it or constrain it—and believe me, as a writer, that's a tough thing to admit. Because that same biological process that tries to shield us from what we cannot handle in one moment is there on our side in the next moment. Those memories we're searching for aren't lost, nor the sensation behind them. They fill our every movement and direct our paths in the future, whether they are in our conscious mind or not. In that way, remembering is a bigger thing than I had ever expected: these memories of our loved ones, indeed of life, do constitute us. They are what helps us rebuild. But they may come to us on their own schedule, and impossible as it is to believe, it's the biggest step of all to know and trust that it will happen.
So for those who see remembering as a process they have not yet mastered, as an action that is painful or sneaks up on them, or as an unfolding mystery: you're all right. Remembering is a thing that is dark and sinewy and not easy, and like anything else in this world, doesn't always work quite how you want it to. But that it works mysteriously is just as much a blessing as the memories themselves: sometimes in years or weeks or even days after the hardest times of life, a memory will emerge that you once deemed too painful to spend time with, and it will seem amazing and special and like a gift. You'll walk down a street you had been long avoiding, visit a friend in the hospital you never wanted to set foot in again, or simply pause in a moment and be overcome with remembering in a way that, once painful, has now become sweet. Most of you know this already, of course. But no matter how well I'm aware of its magic, remembering always surprises me a little. Its tricks sneak up when I least expect them, adding shades of colour to the present, and reminding me of all that I am in those mysterious little moments when I wasn't expecting to feel. Memory left to its own devices is backward-looking and forward-giving, and completely outside of our control—and exactly what feeling life is for.
