The first detail to dissipate is always the sound. You can
see them, the smile, the hair, the fire in the background burning hot and
bright in slow motion on the dark sand. You can see the way their mouth moves
to speak but no voice emerges. You strain to remember, but each iteration seems
to be more distorted. It’s a silent film now, that you play again and again in
your head. Even though it’s only been a few weeks, the voice, the sounds are
lost. Would you recognise it if you were able to hear it again? Memory is so
flawed, so fragile.
Next to go is a sense of time. All the images jumble
together in a pile, until the timeline becomes blurred. Did we see the movies
first? When did we first meet? It gets all so confused, the various scenes get
compacted together and the mind begins to fabricate to fill in the gaps. The
sense of loss is greater now, because small things suddenly remind you of the
moments that have already been forgotten once. You wonder how much you’ve
already lost.
Then the face begins to blur, slowly, expression by
expression. Sure, you can remind yourself with photos, but they are static. You
start to forget the way their brows furrowed together or the softness in their
eyes when you woke up beside them for the first time. The face in your mind
becomes static, like the pictures, forever frozen into that shallow smile that doesn’t
quite reach their eyes. You start to forget the lines on their cheek, and once
again, desperate not to forget, to create that image, the mind begins to
fabricate, smoothing out the skin, widening the eyes. Sometimes the person that
stares back from you at the picture looks nothing like them in your mind, and
you forget what it felt to be on the other side of the lens. But there are
details that stay, like their silhouette against the glowing coals in the
darkness, profile against the bright lights, the way their skin was downed with
light brown hair, golden in the sunlight, the blue-green streaks that ran
through their irises, like looking through the remnants of exploding stars.
Soon you’ll forget whole days, and replace them with the
thin fabrications that are used to placate the people around you. Stories,
myths mix in with the facts until you can’t even tell them apart. Scenes that
you’ve imagined for so long will blend with the past reality until you can’t
quite put your finger on whether it happened, like those dreams that you can’t
quite shake. And then you’ll forget the images, and all you’ll be left is some
flat photographs and stories that have been whittled down again and again by
countless re-tellings. Every so often, a wave of panic rolls over you and you desperately begin to write everything down. But the words fall short and the pen falls limp on the desperately scrawled pages. You crumple them up and try to remember the days for what they are and not what you imagine them to be. Soon, the days and people become a creature of your own creation more than a memory.
The last to go is always scent. Every so often, when the
soft warm smell of burning pine enfolds you, you are suddenly brought back
vividly to that moment. You see clearly every detail, every line on their body,
the salty tang of ocean on your lips, the musky smell of smoke in the air, the
sound of the waves crashing on the sand, and even the roughness of skin beneath
your fingertips. For a brief second, you’ll be there again, transported through
time and space and differences to that special sanctuary that will always
remain, even if at times inaccessible, in the dusty corners of your mind. It is
a smell you’ll never forget, one that could brighten your day or bring you to
tears. And that smell will always be attached to that brief encounter even
though you have probably smelt it a thousand other inconsequential times
before, and serves as a reminder to how every moment, every second we are
evolving, and changing and growing. And that means, inevitably, some things
will be left behind.
