It’s weird how powerful a picture can be without using any words.
It has the power to bring tears to your eyes, and for what reason?
Just because of the fact that it exists. It was there. It shows the way things were, just exactly as you remember them. While people change and some may leave, the picture will always represent what was. Even if you’ve forgotten.
My grandma died when I was four. The only reason I have a few memories of her is because she was really, really sick and we went to visit her just about every day.
Over the years, I’ve come to sort out a lot of the confusion I had involving her death. Like how the most vivid memory I have of her is the last time I saw her when she was alive. Or how the song she used to sing me to sleep with was one she had sung the night before she died.
Or simply how she had actually died the day we went to her house to clean out her things and I kept asking in confusion “Where’s all Grandma’s stuff going?” and nobody would answer me because I didn’t know what things like “dead” meant.
I think in that respect, her death is the one that has impacted me most. People always talk about a really close relative that died that devastated them, that they knew for years.
I only knew her for four years but her death still touched me, even if I couldn’t understand most of it.
The scariest part of it all is that at the point when she died, I was aware that I couldn’t remember a single second of most of my life. I think the only thing that kept my memory in check was my fascination with the ability of recollection. I was petrified of the fact that I couldn’t remember the moments that had brought me up to the “now.” I couldn’t remember the day I was born, which I didn’t know was normal at the time, I just knew that here I was, Danielle Ann Desmond, four years old, in Watertown, Massachusetts. I couldn’t tie my shoes, I’d lost my first tooth biting down too hard on a popsicle stick, and I couldn’t whistle.
I knew stuff like that but for other stuff, it was just…missing. Like it was never there. I hated it. It made me feel like I wasn’t alive. It just seemed weird and wrong to me that other people could tell me stories about my life that I didn’t even know about. It wasn’t right that other people knew my life better than I did; it made me feel like if ever those people weren’t there to tell me, I wouldn’t know who I was. Upon this realization, I spent a good portion of my childhood sitting by myself and trying to think back on things, constantly saying to myself “I’m going to remember this. Years from now, I’m going to remember this” and I’d check back every week or so, sitting in the same spot, seeing if I could remember.
I think this is the only reason I have such vivid childhood memories.
I remember saying the same things to myself the last day I was with my grandmother. I knew that she was one of the most important people in my life who told me really important stories about me and if she knew all that information, I better start storing it just in case she’s never here.
I didn’t even know she was sick, I was just afraid she’d be gone. I was always afraid of people leaving me.
Luckily, something about sitting with her on her bed and watching Thomas the Tank Engine the day before she died felt important; I thought I’d need it later.
I’m glad I did, because I still have it. The only thing I didn’t have was what she looked like. I know what her bed felt like beneath my bottom or her soft pillows beneath my head. But the sights?
All I have is a little window of perception. A television set on PBS.
I wish now that I’d paid more attention to her when we went to visit her. But sometimes, things will remind me.
Every time I smell something from Avon, I feel like I’m in her house. She bought all of their beauty products; so many facial creams and deodorant.
My cousin just posted a picture of her from two weeks before she died.
And while not the best quality, there she is, y’know?
Tears were brought to my eyes because that’s her. That’s my grandmother. Exactly how I remember her.
Before today, I thought no pictures existed of her in this state. She was too skinny and sickly and hated taking pictures, especially like this.
What else was I supposed to do but cry?
This is the missing piece in my memory. That was all I needed. I’d figured out when the last time I saw her was, what “death” was after accidentally killing some “pet” worms and worked out that must be what happened to Grandma since she wasn’t here anymore, and why that song she sang me is so vivid. The way she looked was the only thing I was missing.
Everything suddenly just slid in and clicked together. Now it’s locked.
It’s like my inner four year old has been appeased.
Now maybe she’ll stop hounding me for cookies.
