On Memory

I have been working on these posts for quite a while. Memory is such an interesting thing, I found that I preferred to write about it in experience rather than as an objective observer. What is more subjective than memory? Anyway, bear with me.

December 3rd. It's a cold evening, though not as cold as a December night in Provo can be. I approach the stairs of the worn-out white brick building, and start up them, not bothering to count flights. It is muscle memory by now--my feet know the third floor. Though I've walked this very flight innumerable times, tonight is different. It is different because it's December and my surroundings are decked appropriately. Scratch that. It is simpler than that. Tonight is different because it should be different, and it isn't.

I know that I should feel removed from this, like I don't belong, and have been reduced to the status of an outsider--someone who is lucky not to get a ticket for parking in the lot. I focus for a time on the culprits of my despondency: the brightly lit tree and the other lights surrounding the roof of the building. What is it about the tree and those lights that gives me a sensation beyond recognition and excitement? It is closer to happiness than longing, and further from sorrow than nostalgia. In fact, it completely transcends these emotions: it is transportation.

For a moment, nothing has changed. For a moment, I live there, and they know me. The people I see through the windows (illuminated so with strings of dollar-store lights held up by strips of duct tape) are friends, and their pursuits are my concern.

My feet carry me automatically to the front door of one particular apartment. I try the knob without knocking, it is unlocked. I open it to find the place dark, devoid of people, and decked with a few holiday decorations that have been hung alongside several of the things that had adorned the walls when I had lived there. These decorations look like intruders to my eyes, alongside those things I know so well.

I walk into the living room, slipping off my shoes next to the couch, after hanging my coat and scarf on the closet door. I sink down on the couch and close my eyes. Somewhere in some state of heightened and imagined perception, I become aware of the door opening and make out through the darkness the well-known figure of my best friend walking in the door, the signature bounce in her step. "Hello, Dearie!" she smiles. "How was your day?"

What to respond? How was my day? How do I begin to say how I feel--what I know?
I try to let out half a smirk, I sigh, and I begin: "My day? It was wonderful. I just spent the last few hours with you and your husband. Your baby bump is showing now, and we've been trying out different names on the baby, attempting to decide what will suit him best. Joshua? Jonathan? Owen? Not Jimmer, though. Not Jimmer."

She looks at me, quizzically. She doesn't get it. Neither do I.

Then she is gone and I push my face against the glass of the window, the view getting blurry. It's not tears, it's the steam from my breath on the cold surface. Each time I exhale, the smudge gets bigger, until the world beyond is a mere collage of diffused lights and blistered colors. I do the only thing left to do--pull away from the window and leave the world to be as it is, on its own, for the rest of the night.



December 20th. I pull out onto University Avenue in Provo, heading toward center street, the freeway, and the road home. It has been a perfect Christmas week morning and afternoon, complete with multiple inches of fluffy snow, the baking of banana bread, The Carpenter's Christmas Portrait, lunch with the best friend, and a stop at the mall to pick up some last-minute gifts. Now I have taken my leave of her, it is starting to get darker, and the snow has turned wet, thin, and penetrating. It has melted into such a dull grey, it might as well be rain. Maybe it wants to be. Maybe no one can be sure what it is.

As I approach it, I'm not sure how I will respond. I know what is coming up on the road ahead of me, and I have been planning it, but now I want to back out. It suddenly seems easy to turn around, get on the freeway another way, bypass the whole thing, and pretend it didn't happen. Call it morbid curiosity, but the pull is too strong, and I drive on the intended path until I see it.

From far enough away, it looks just as it always did, standing there at the corner of University Avenue and Center. Yet as I draw nearer, the changes are permanent, and unmistakable. The walls still stand, but everything that made the building what it truly was, the inside, is gone. No, it is worse than gone. It is reconfigured in new patterns, colors, and scents that now lie in such a stark contrast to the original as to render said original to nothing but an all-too-quickly fading memory.

I park the car in the nearest space available on the street, get out, and approach the scene with such reverence as ever a comparable site could warrant. There is tape blocking it off, but one can still get surprisingly close. So on I walk, staring blankly. No one is around, aside from a single security guard in a garish orange jacket. I mentally block him out. I won't cross the line, and that ensures that he cannot cross into my solitude. I shudder, a reaction mirrored by one of the large trees that cannot cross the line any more than I can. A few days ago, it was welcome there, now it too must be estranged from the tragedy; just a helpless onlooker. A single leaf, result of the shudder, falls to the ground: the evidence, reminder and souvenir of the experience. I stoop down, pick it up, and deposit it safely in my pocket.

I can see myself walking around the corner of the building. It is a cold January night, and I lose my heel in a sidewalk seam, laughing and tripping, trying to recover my pride. I see two dear sisters sing in this building, on separate occasions. I myself had sung there, at a conference. One of the thousands of conferences that can no longer be held in the same location. I envision a group of friends crowding around a make-shift "time capsule", filling it full of nothing important to anyone but themselves.

I would mention that I'm suppressing tears, but I'm not. No tears today, I'm not there yet. Not yet. Nothing now but a stupid sense of bewilderment, and the mental picture of a blushing girl minus one heel.

Exiting the scene, I walk out of the gate and see two men standing on the sidewalk, disposable camera in hand, staring as I had done. I plan to walk on without acknowledgment, but my plan does not match theirs.

"It's sad, about it burning down, isn't it?" The taller man states simply.
"It's pretty upsetting." Is my response.
"I liked that church."
"So did I."

The conversation ends there. What more is there to say? I reason. Christmas is coming, after all. The damage is done, the sky is getting darker. I'll get around to crying some other time.