The Most Distant Memories

I remember tidbits of my life as a very small child and even a couple as a baby if my mom assessed one memory correctly. My old memories are like snapshots in my life, strange stills that mean little to me at all�a pan of old oil, my brother�s infant seat, cinder block steps, my grandma�s kitchen table. I don�t know why such things are frozen in my brain, but they are there. My past in odd still life photography.

I can�t say what my first memory really is. All those snapshots from my past are like photos carelessly stored in an old shoebox in the back of the closet. I know they are old, but they are in no particular order. I am happy to just remember, to shuffle through those visions every so often and know there was something.

While sharing a memory with my mom, we think we dated one of them. This was not so much a snapshot as a very short clip. I only remember stepping in something and some trouble. I assumed it was I who got into trouble, but it was my dad. From my mom�s account, he was supposed to be watching me. I was wearing new shoes and got them wet while outside with my dad. I think she said he was washing the car. I know she said I was only one. I thought it had to have been from when I was three, but there was no such incident then, and by three, we had moved to our new house. I knew we were still at our first house. I don�t know how I know that, but I do.

Past that first known recollection, there is a sparse array of snapshots and short movies. I remember going to my grandma�s when my brother was born, but I have no memory of seeing him later. My aunt still lived there then, and I would get her to paint my fingernails. Kindergarten only brings memories of a small black snake in a tank and another girl telling me I was coloring wrong. �People don�t have blue hair.� �Some people do,� I countered. Even then, I liked blue hair.

The first big event in the archive in my head is the death of my grandpa. Up until then, he was an old bald man in overalls, and the other grandkids and I would fight over who got to put his cigarette in his mouth. I can still smell the scent when I opened the pack, and I can hear the soft brush of flint and the flame igniting as he lit his silver Zippo, and then the click as the flame disappeared under the lid. Strangely, I don�t remember the smell of smoke, only the sight of grey-blue curls rising in the air. My grandpa didn�t die of cancer though. He had a massive heart attack in his sleep. I was five. My mom was only twenty-six.

If you were to ask me now about the funeral, I would say it consisted of my dad lifting me up to see my grandpa lying in a casket. It was lots of people. It was riding in a dark car. It was bleak and grey, and nothing about that memory seems to have any real color. I don�t remember anyone else crying, not my mom or grandma or aunt, even though I know they did. I only remember myself crying and crying because there would be no more cigarettes or lighter or blue, blue eyes and scratchy silver whiskers. His green, swivel rocker, the one that seemed made for spinning and got grandkids yelled at, would be empty now.

Somehow, that swivel rocker always held his memory, his essence for everyone, I think. Grandma kept it in the same place in the living room until it was so tattered and worn that it wasn�t even decent for sitting. That swivel spun like magic until the very end. No one thought to save it. I wish we had.

A glider rocker now sits in that place, next to the heater with a view out the window. The other was always Grandpa�s chair, long after Grandpa didn�t fill it. Grandma sat there, but it was always his chair. I like to think that in a small way, sitting there was like having him hold her again. She had a hard time letting that chair go. I understand. It was a memory in itself. Much love was held by that chair, went into it. It�s now with Grandpa again, in our memories. I suspect he waits in that chair now. He�s been waiting a long time, but I�m selfishly glad of that.

I can�t stop funeral memories from happening, even though I might want them to. I�ve been fortunate to attend few in my thirty three years. I don�t handle them well, but who really does? I don�t want them to get easier. I don�t want to handle them well.