Let’s talk about memory.
I am 73 years old. I lament the loss of what was my phenomenal memory. But that is not at all what this diary is about. The events I’m going to share have very vague dates attached to them. But what I do remember is much more dear.
I remember that my dad died a few weeks after my 19th birthday, in 1969. I don’t remember the exact date. A year after my beloved uncle died, sometime in May, 1968. What I do remember is my three college roommates skipping classes to find me on campus to tell me my dad had had a massive stroke. They didn’t leave my side. That’s what I remember. He died three days later, I think, in a different world where the doctor called the family together to say good bye, but made the decision himself to turn off the machines. I remember that the trajectory of my life changed that day, because my childhood was over. I now had to be an adult. I wouldn’t go to Carnegie-Mellon where I was supposed to live with a professor and his family and help care for their small children in order to pay a part of my way to work with theatre for deaf children. Facilitated by Spencer Tracy’s wife who saw something in me. My mother lived in three-buck housecoats to give me everything she could to realize my dreams. My mother, who I wouldn’t abandon.
My mother died the end of February, 2022. I don’t remember the exact date. I do remember my best friend defying her mother to get a bus to get to me. The busses weren’t running. A good Samaritan picked her up in a raging ice storm and delivered her to my door. I remember my Boyfriend from Hell telling me, for the first time, that he loved me. I remember picking up my brother at the train station – he was 15 years my senior but that event forged the deepest friendship two siblings could ever have. I don’t remember the exact dates. I was now an orphan – life would never be the same. I remember the stinging ice on my face that late February day that we placed my mother in the ground. I remember her sister Betty bitching about what that ice storm would do to her new face lift. I remember never forgiving her for that.
I remember washing dishes during shiva in my mother’s tiny kitchen, and feeling her magnificent soul rushing through me, and my brother rushing to the kitchen because he had felt her, too. I don’t remember the date. It doesn't matter, does it?
I remember the day I lost my brother. We were usually on the phone ten times a day. We’d had a stupid fight, and didn’t talk for a few days. That’s when he died. I do remember that date – December 5, 2000. I remember it because it meant he didn’t have to live to see George W. Bush become POTUS. My brother thought he wouldn’t he wouldn’t be too terrible a POTUS because he’d lost the popular vote. I knew he’d be terrible. The first time I realized I wasn’t the little girl my brother saw me as. But he didn’t have to see 9/11. I do remember that he picked my husband in 1980 before I did. Told me not to eff it up. This was the guy for me. We were married six weeks to the day after we met, and my beloved brother was there with us. Our 44th anniversary will be this August. I remember that my husband and brother were far closer than my husband was with his own brothers. Their relationship is what I remember, what I treasure to this day.
I believe that Joe Biden remembers his daughter’s hands in his, his wife’s arms around him. But Joe must endure the public cruelty of Robert Hur’s hateful, malicious attacks. Something this obviously compassionate man does not deserve. I hope I can be big enough to not wish that hurt on Hur, but I’m not sure I can. This is a cruel man who should experience the hate he inflicted. Maybe he’ll learn something.
I can no longer call up my phenomenal memory that supported me most of my life. But I am filled with the memories of loving people who got me through tragedies. I believe my life is richer than that of Robert Hur’s. Memory is not a date. It’s a feeling. It’s in your heart, in the ‘memory’ of your soul. It’s the best of being human. I wish Robert Hur had a clue what that means.