Memory Tricks
I love summer. I got home yesterday following lunch and an afternoon of music with time to mow. So, I did. I changed into my work clothes and fired up the zero turn mower. And now this morning, I can look out my kitchen window and see my dew covered lawn and think how nice it looks, and later I will get out the line trimmer and edge and my suburban soul will be further soothed.
When I work, sometimes I remember my wife in the latter stages of her dementia standing on the porch smiling a beatific childlike smile, clapping her hands in glee to show me her pleasure in my work. There we days when I hated that because I knew what it meant, but now it’s all I can see and I wish I could see it again. But that was then, and this is now and at least I have good memories to carry me along.
What’s odd is that if I wasn’t writing like this no one would even know I had those memories, they’d just see me and think all was well. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not drowning in sorrow. It’s just that I’m thinking about how many people there are in the world carrying their little burdens in silence, unseen. I feel for them because I know most of their friends soon stop thinking about the dead and assume everything is okay since they’re smiling. And this is a weird place to get to after starting out with a well mowed lawn, but that’s how grief and memory works. It just comes.