“On the Anniversary of My Mother’s Death” by Amy L. Bernstein is a microessay about the fundamental nature of memory. Is memory a “Scottish castle in ruins” or a “distant star that shimmers in peripheral vision”? As Bernstein meditates on memory, she not only laments what’s been lost, but also illuminates, and commemorates, what’s worth remembering. —Court Harler
I forget.
My brother texts a photo with a note. Otherwise, I’d have forgotten still.
A quarter century on, I’ve forgotten the sound of my mother’s voice. How she entered a room. The feel of her kiss on my cheek. The date she died.
This is unsurprising.
My memory bank lies like a Scottish castle in ruins, its boulders worn and scattered, half hidden by grass. Dates, smells, sounds, the vivid contours of when-and-where all trampled by a conquering army stealing away with the spoils.
The spoils of memory.
I dwell in a particular uncanny valley, where my husband or a friend might say, Remember when we…. Remember how you…. I’m shown a photo proving I was in situ, but I cannot reconnect with the time, the place, the day, the prevailing mood, the last great meal. Sometimes, I do not recognize my own clothing.
Entire chunks of my life, from every decade, have fled the tumbled walls of this memory castle—never a memory palace, never grand enough for that. My mother is one casualty among many.
Have I been a careless custodian, allowing memories to flee, never to return? Is there some trick to remembering that I never learned and am now too old to master?
And what is memory, if one cannot remember? Is it like perceiving a distant star that shimmers in peripheral vision, vanishing the instant you try to look straight at it?
How many nights have I stared up at the sky, trying and failing to unmask those stars in hiding? Wondering, where will I have gone when my “now” turns to “then”?
A central fact of my life: I am a champion forgetter, an uncooperative witness interrogated by a squad of truth officers trying, and failing, to nail memories to the wall.
“One minute you’re a grown-ass woman,” Mary Karr writes in The Art of Memoir, “then a whiff of cumin conjures your dad’s curry, and a whole door to the past blows open, ushering in uncanny detail.”
Oh, uncanny detail, where are you? I wish to be flooded—to drink my fill of remembering itself…. The name of the girl at summer camp who believed she came from outer space…. The face of the first boy I kissed, reduced to a hank of long hair…. The first mountain I climbed…. The words I must have uttered to my newborn daughter….
But I won’t be greedy. I’d settle for just one memory, after all: my mother and me, talking, touching, laughing, ever present, and absolutely unforgettable.
AMY L. BERNSTEIN writes award-winning fiction and nonfiction that lets readers feel while making them think. As the author of six novels, including Tent City, and a book of inspiration for creatives, Wrangling the Doubt Monster, Amy brings a compassionate and insightful voice to writers’ conferences and podcasts around the country.
Featured image by martin bennie, courtesy of Unsplash.
Flash the Court 