The Quiet Erosion of Memory

I am treating myself to a Me-Day this Saturday by attending an all-day scrapbook gathering. 12 hours in a room full of fellow scrappers – creating, communing, and sharing inspiration while hopefully catching up on overdue preservation of family history. I’ve been spending the evenings this week organizing and preparing the things for the project I’ll be taking with me. I’m roughly three years behind on my projects, so I have a wide variety of options for what I could take, but have decided to continue on with the vacation book I started at – and haven’t touched since – the last scrap-a-thon I attended in May.

Vacation books are my favorite. Preserving a vacation in this medium lends so well to capturing the atmosphere and the feeling of being carefree, without schedule, and bursting with wonder and discovery. Photos, small souvenirs, ephemera, paper and embellishments of riotous color and loads journaling can recapture memories that may otherwise quietly slip away from recollection just as the bold brushstrokes of sunset melt into the dusk. In less time-constrained days, I would plant myself amongst my scrapping wares as soon as the photos came back from developing, and would compose our visual treasures into an elaborate oversized book. Feverishly. Joyously. Before the tiny details faded.

Nearly three years have already skittered away since we took the cruise for which I am currently creating a book. I came home from this trip pregnant, which explains a lot about the delay. But as I sorted the crisp, bright fragments by island and event, I realized how much I’d already begun to forget. Much was brought back simply by seeing the photos once more. The intensity of the rainbow off our balcony, arching gracefully over the St. Thomas Harbor. The vibrant, eye-piercing teal of the St. Maarten water. The lush, succulent jungle of Barbados that you can nearly feel soaking in beneath your skin. The taste of raw sugarcane, coconut milk, and pineapple straight from the plant. Photos are powerful tools of recollection.

Sadly, though, other things have already slipped away. I can’t remember the name of the guide whom with we spent our entire day on St. Lucia. While the photo itself is still charming, I don’t recall why the cluster of chickens congregating beneath the lemon grass was so funny to us. The significance of many of the sites and landmarks has become blurry now. I’ve forgotten the names of half the staff who took care of us on the boat – young men and women who seemed almost like family by the time we left.

Ultimately, does it matter? No, I suppose not. I have more than a bounty of captured memories from our trip with which to work. But it’s the little details that make life sweet – it’s a shame to lose any of them.

On a revisited topic, I talked to my mom yesterday and asked her about LeeAnne’s kids. My mom is a Sunday School teacher, and the boys have been filtering through her class over the past few years since it all happened. They are still living with LeeAnne’s parents – after the murder-suicide, there was a threat from his parents of a custody battle. Apparently that had somehow been resolved and settled. The boys are doing all right, all things considered. The youngest has been blessed with the forgetfulness of a small child, and doesn’t seem to recall much – growing up relatively undisturbed and unaffected by the tragic loss of his parents. The middle boy likewise seems to have decently adjusted. The oldest remembers. He is sometimes all right. Other times, disturbed and haunted by what had transpired between the two most important people in his young life. Only time will reveal the consequences of the ripples.

Sometimes, to forget is a blessing.