Remembering to forget

A friend visited a few weeks ago and, coming across our Shelf of Colin in the kitchen asked “Who’s this?”

I think we forget how few people actually met Colin or the last 2-3 years of his life, because we were so busy whisking him from hospital to hospital or keeping people at bay while he was recovering from chemotherapy. I imagine, for some people, they know much more about him through my blogging than through any actual contact they ever had with him. How would they have?

Nonetheless, my eyes met Christina and, speaking only for myself, there was a range of emotions that began with “This can’t be for real” to “Dear God, people are forgetting him already.”

That quote from “The Boys,” about people only finally dying when their name is spoken the last time, sticks with me. And I suppose the idea that his memory is fading is a slight reason to panic. Like I have to fight that much harder to hold on to him.

Of course, the wrong people remember. It’s also been a few weeks since we got a letter from the bank, urging the heirs of Colin Christop Sorrells (why they couldn’t manage the ‘her’ to complete his middle name is beyond me) that a superior court ruling had rendered null and void parts of the contract governing his bank account, the account I closed nearly two years ago with some red-eyed teller whom I’d never seen before who, like so many other people, felt the need to tell me that he also had children and couldn’t imagine losing them. And I’m not mad at him for saying that, but one gets dulled down by that particular line. Like, it’s not something you want to imagine, so don’t try, OK?

And then the right people remember, but when you don’t expect it. I’ve written before how I envy the kids for being able to speak about Colin in the present tense and to still laugh about his memory. But also worrying that it means they’re letting him go to quickly. But then Emma woke up crying today after a nightmare about Colin. She was shaken so badly we kept her home from school. And I can’t tell what’s worse, then seeming to forget him or them going through the hell of remembering him.

And then, when she said the dream had started with good memories of Colin and then turned into bad ones, I told her to focus on the good ones. But I don’t even know what I’m talking about there, because it’s so hard for me to remember the good ones. It’s like they’re locked in a box and I can’t get to them until I wade through all the memories of the chemotherapy and the useless nurses and my trepidation about going to his grave. So, how can I get mad at people for remembering him wrong when my memories are so out of whack?

I suppose it’s the week for this. Because it’s the way the world works, I turn 50 on Wednesday, then we hit our two-year mark since Colin’s death on Friday and then I’m having a birthday party for myself on Saturday, which feels weird every time I write the sentence down and realize what this sequence of events means. I’m ambivalent about turning 50: I thought I’d look older at this point. I’m not thinking about the two-year anniversary. I’m throwing the party because it’s sort of what you do when you turn 50 in Germany and because, after this nightmare pandemic, I think we all deserve a breather. And I guess I wish we could have the party a few weeks or months later, to give us some space from the anniversary of Colin’s death, but who knows when this pandemic will end, and the later we push it, the more likely we are to end up having a party indoors and risking becoming a superspreader event. That’s just the way the world works. You take the good and you take the bad and you try your best to remember it all in a way that doesn’t wreck your head.