When I was in the hospital, both sets of parents encouraged me to take notes, keep a journal, anything to help me to be able to remember what we were going through. There were so many free hours, so many days where I did nothing but move from my bed to my bathroom and back again. Just jot down some details, they suggested.
My sister's best friend had given me a Walkman during my first month. It was the kind that you could use to record stuff into.
"I know you've been tired," she said. "But you can still speak into this if you want. You know. To preserve the memories."
Another friend -- a long-time friend and former secretary of my mother's -- had also gone shopping. Everybody, it seemed, was on the same page. She'd picked out a hard cover notebook with a marbled blue cover and clean blank pages for writing, and a new Waterman (ball point, not fountain) for writing.
I appreciated all of it. Really. But I was always so damn tired.
"Besides," I told them, individually, collectively, "How could I possibly forget? This is the sort of experience that you just don't forget."
"No, no," they would respond. "That's not what we meant. Of course you'll never forget that you had leukemia. But you might just maybe forget the name of one particular doctor. Not all of them, but maybe just one or two. Or the man who worked in Food Services, the one with the vast personal library of movies, classics, bringing a new one to you every day with your lunch. You might forget what he looks like, his name, the different movies he'd brought.
"Even the way your chest felt, remember, when it was swollen with blood? These things. These specific things are the kinds of details you are likely to forget."
"Not to worry," I'd told them. I was twenty, twenty-one years old, as confident as you can be when you're flat on your back in a hospital bed.
"Don't worry," I'd said. "I'll remember everything."
Wrong.
I remember that I survived. I remember only a few of the most lucid dreams. Names have slowly disappeared behind a dark wall of fog. Specifics, for the most part, elude me. Or maybe I just haven't made sufficient attempts to dredge my memory yet.
One of my first doctors -- tall, young, square-jawed and rugged attractive -- told my mother that some of the drugs would make me forget.
"They are primarily to fight infection," he'd said. "Understand, though, that in addition to helping his body fight infections, they will also affect his memory. And it's not such a bad trade-off. There are some things that are better forgotten."
This will be my attempt to remember. I will write. I will chase my memories and capture them on paper. Memories like Jackson Pollack. A burst of color there, a dribble of paint, more splashes in the corner because that blue reminds me of this blue, and suddenly it is a complete picture. Rarely do my memories progress in linear fashion; I doubt that this will either. For that I ask your patience.
