Sometimes the memory rushes in so unexpectedly the heart aches so much so, the eyes cannot contain it and release it the only way they now how. The flood begins as if a dam had been broken – the one holding back the momentos of long ago. Love loving loveliness spilling over so forcefully, long ago momentarily drowns the present.
This time it was a podcast that talked about Tribe’s Scenario and it made me think how he would have loved it. It reminded me of days hearing his oh so loud gold diesel fueled Jetta driving up my driveway, the engine only slightly drowned out by the subwoofer in the trunk bumping Public Enemy, that first 15 seconds leading up to the opening line, “1989 the number, another summer…” or “base, how low can you go” as he picked me up for high school every morning. The tight turns he took so fast to get me to smack him for driving recklessly all while the base of the subwoofer massaged our bodies and eclipsed not only our voices, his laughter, but even our thoughts. It’s not so much about missing a partner, a boyfriend, but more about missing my childhood friend, the guy who criticized my Mexican music or KROQ music and made me listen to Ice Cube and Public Enemy 2 Live Crew, the one who understood why I loved Soul II Soul. This is just what it’s like when you lose someone. You walk around your days happily in the present and then suddenly a sound a scent, a tv program, a line in a song, a podcast transports you to the past. The past when their present and yours intersected.
It’s not so much that the memory provokes an ache for him, that person, or our lives or even for what could have been, or what you missed living together in that same present. It’s an ache that comes of the memories of a past life and an ache of the life they didn’t get to live. The present you enjoy they cannot – with or without you; they are not living in their human vessel in this time along with you. And that is just a tough reality to bare. I think of that more and more since my primo transitioned. How many memories he and I did not share because of our physical distance as adults. And now, how many more experiences we won’t have together because it’s too late to lessen the distance.
But really, the what could have beens are not about our lives together, the memories we could have made together, but more about the life they did not have, my primo and him – the life they do not have. It’s the what could have been for their lives had they lived, had their time not been cut so short. He, my primo, who both left this world so young, do not have the opportunity to experience life with or without me and that makes my heart ache. My eyes overflow every so often, triggered by the most simplest of sounds, scents, memories, thoughts of what could have been — for them.
So, “I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much” – Sandra Cisneros. But it never goes away completely.
