I Remember

Isabela Velasquez

“Remember that time when?”

That’s the funny thing about me. I do not remember. I can hold onto memories just as I can hold onto water. It slips through my hands, through the crevices of my fingers where there are little holes between the parts that don’t fit together. My hands, left wet but holding nothing, are akin to my memory. Searching and scrambling to find pieces that are not there anymore. 

“No, I don’t remember.”, I reply, as my mother goads me into the darkest depths of my recollection. I nod my head absentmindedly as she walks me through my own childhood. All while I am looking at her but not at her, I see flashes of the blue rusted swing by Cabrillo. The oddly dry and itchy pasture where I used to fly kites with my father by the Korean Bell. The bedroom with the Harry Potter posters, where I slept in bunk beds every night for 6 years. She remembers it all for me.

I am trying to remember the year 2015. That is that one year that I honestly cannot even piece together without assistance. The fragments of that year lie disassembled. I flip over photo albums and digital cameras that all have the same beaming little girl captured in them. I do not recognize her well. 

The one thing I do remember though, is my dad’s stroke. I remember waking up that morning in our little run-down apartment, off the coast, which was too small to just hold me and my mother, let alone the three of us. 

I remember waking up to a thud. A loud one. My mother was laughing, scolding my father. He must have been playing a joke with her, I assumed. My mother loved how funny he was, I did too. He was not playing a joke. He could not walk. Or get up. I remember the EMTs that carried him out. I remember my grandmother weeping and holding her son in his hospital bed. Clutching her crystal rosary and praying so furiously, her clammy hands found their way to mine. And I held on because that is what she needed. Her glistening tears fell from her swollen eyes to the bed sheets, coloring them to a muted grey. I remembered his god-awful hospital room. Spacious, but nonetheless, disgusting and depressing, like most. And as for my father, he just slept. We spent the rest of that year nursing him back to being as healthy as he was. I think. I do not remember anything other than that. 

The day my grandmother died, I was cleaning my room. My fluffy grey carpet was weighed down by the abundance of clothes I hurriedly threw around that morning, trying to get ready for school. I knelt on the floor, sweating like a hog, attempting to tidy up before my mother could catch me and scold me. I was never good at keeping my room clean. 

The door creaked open, and there she stood. In that split second, my mother seemed quiet and reserved. Upset, but trying to keep it together. She explained to me my grandmother died, Lola, I called her. It’s Tagalog for grandma. Unfortunately, I did not remember her well. My personal interactions with her anyway. 

My Lola had been in the hospital for five years. She had collapsed in her home. Since then, she resided in the nursing home. In those five years, I never saw her. Not because I did not want to see her. But because I was scared. Scared she would not look like how I remembered. The little that I remembered. 

A month before she died, my mother and I visited her for the first and last time. This time, I did see her. In her room, she just lay there. Splayed out on the trim hospital bedsheets, hooked up to wires and beeping machines, asleep. And all those times my mother talked to Lola at her bedside, she never reacted or responded. At that moment, I knew I was right all along. I had a right to be scared. I was scared. 

Her chest rose and fell as if she was benumbed but her eyes were sunken, her hair salt and pepper, her varicose veins a violent purple. 

I revere and remember her, but this is the image that comes to mind when I remember her. 

Certain smells, objects, or even people, take me back to the way things were. 

My mother’s sour sinigang takes me back to when tipped it over the dinner table, I burned myself with it and had to get treated for second-degree burns. For a while, that damaged skin, tender and pink, reminded me of how utterly stupid I was to mess around with hot soup. 

My pink silk pillowcases remind me of my birthday last year, which I spent alone. I always felt alone. 

There’s one tear stain on the corner of that pillowcase that I cannot seem to get out. Every time I flip my pillow over, I remember all those bitter feelings again. 

My one brown and faded Gap hoodie still smells like the worst day of my life, the day that it finally clicked in my head that I was broken, undeserving, and most of all: useless. I remember praying to God that night, to magically take my pain away. I realize now that it does not work like that. 

Nostalgia is a beautiful thing for most. My mother drinks in nostalgia like a cup of coffee, desperate to keep the portrait of her mother still alive in her mind. Nostalgia is not for those who strain to push away all their nasty thoughts and bitter memories. It is not for those who simply are still reminded of those said memories every day. Sometimes I don’t want to recall the little things that God has cursed me to remember. But I remember everything but the “good parts”, it seems. 

I remember how I cried every day, before school, after school, and during school, during my freshman year. I remember how I picked myself up time and time again, with no one to shoulder me. 

I remember how I had stitched myself together again, like a ragdoll. 

That version of me, with all the old memories and bad thoughts is not the me that is writing this now. Because this version of me limped through the rockiest roads and hiked the steepest trails. I have known true suffering and desperation. But, I also have known peace. I have wiped tears and have been given opportunities and have had great friends, that others would not be so blessed to have. I have lifted myself and others up, and truly, that is the best gift of all. 

I used to believe I would be stuck, in my forever tormented state of mind. I used to believe that there was no getting better, there was no moving on and growing. 

But there is. There is something beyond unhappiness. There is something beyond your sorrow. No matter how deep it runs! Of course, it is always there, and you can never make it truly go away. But, the girl who trapped herself in tortuous conditions of nostalgia has also seen the greatest pleasures. You were not made to live in shackles forever. Be free. Make new memories to remember.

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Isabela is a passionate writer from Southern California. Though she enjoys writing in all forms, she mostly enjoys writing personal essays and fiction! Her favorite authors include Jane Austen, Hanya Yanigahara, and Sylvia Plath. In her free time, she likes to write (of course!), spend time with her friends, and swim at the beach. You can reach her at @isabelavreese on Instagram!