Episode 6.1-What do you remember? Write more

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Episode 6.1-What do you remember? Write more

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What Do You Remember? Write MoreI thought about Mrs. Oxford today.I don't know why.Perhaps it was the weather. Perhaps it was nothing at all.She had been an old woman when I knew her, although now, when I think of her, I realise that she must once have been young.This seems obvious.But it wasn't, when I was five.When I was five, she was simply Mrs. Oxford.Sometimes my grandmother left me with her.There was no discussion about it. Adults said things like, “You're going to Mrs. Oxford,” and you went.Her house had a veranda.There were lizards everywhere.They made a sound I found disgusting.I can still hear it.She didn't seem to mind.She had beautiful teeth. Hazel eyes. Long silver hair that she kept carefully.I remember her hands.I remember the radio.Six o'clock.The news.Then seven.Then eight.The news went on while we were there, the world coming into the house through that little radio while I sat somewhere nearby.Sometimes she gave me jam.Guava.Cherry.There was sorrel.There were things she cooked that I cannot make now.This annoys me.She had shown me.I had watched.At the time I must have thought there would always be another day when I could ask her how she did it.There wasn't.That is one of the peculiar things about being young.You don't know which moments are the last time.You don't know that you are collecting them.You think you are simply sitting on a veranda.There are photo albums in my memory.She had many of them.She would turn the pages and tell me about people.Her children.Relatives.People who had gone somewhere.Canada, I think.There were faces I didn't know.Names that meant nothing to me.She knew them.She would tell me who they were.I listened in the way children listen.Not carefully.Not carelessly either.Just without knowing that one day the story would matter.I think that was when I first understood, without having the words for it, that people had lives I couldn't see.Mrs. Oxford had a life before I knew her.Of course she did.She had been a girl.She had friends.She had fallen in love, perhaps.She had quarrelled with people.She had been frightened.She had wanted things.There must have been things she was proud of.Things she regretted.Things she had never told anyone.But I didn't ask.I knew Mrs. Oxford.I did not know the girl she had been.I did not know the young woman.I knew the old woman who gave me jam.When you're five, this is enough.Later, it isn't.Years passed.Then Alzheimer's came.By then I was old enough to understand what it meant, although understanding did not make it less strange.She didn't recognise me.I remember being hurt by this.It was an unreasonable hurt.She wasn't choosing not to remember me.But some stubborn part of me thought:How can you not know me?I knew her.I remembered the veranda.The radio.The lizards.Her hair.The jam.The photographs.The sound of her voice.All these things were still inside me.And yet she could no longer reach them.That was the strange part.Something had happened between us.I knew it had.I carried the evidence.She couldn't.Perhaps this is what we mean when we say someone has disappeared.Not that they have gone somewhere.They are still sitting there.Still breathing.Still themselves, somehow.But parts of the person you knew have become inaccessible.And then, eventually, there is no one left who remembers those parts.That thought has stayed with me.Because people disappear in pieces.A recipe goes.A saying goes.A story.A name.The reason your family always did something in a particular way.The song your grandmother sang.The smell of a kitchen.The person who lived at the end of the road.Nobody thinks these things are important enough to record.Until the person who knew them is gone.Then someone asks:“Why did we used to do that?”And nobody knows.So lately I have been writing things down.Not properly.Not beautifully.Just enough.A sentence.A memory.Something somebody said.The ridiculous thing your child did when they were six.The story your father always told.Your grandmother's expression.The smell of the kitchen where you grew up.The song they always played at church.Write it down.You think you will remember.You will remember some of it.That's the trouble.Memory is selective.It keeps the strangest things.You may forget the recipe and remember the taste.Forget the conversation and remember someone's hands.Forget the year and remember the light coming through a window.You may forget what happened and remember how it felt.I think about Mrs. Oxford sometimes and wonder what I would ask her now.Not about church.Not about being a good woman.Not about the things I thought were important when I was five.I would ask:Who were you?What were you like at twenty?Who was your best friend?What did you think your life would become?What frightened you?What made you laugh until you couldn't breathe?Who broke your heart?What did you regret?What did you never tell anyone?But she isn't here to answer.So I am left with the veranda.The radio.The lizards.The jam.A handful of ...

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