blue nights
In fact I no longer value this kind of memento.
I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got what got wasted.
There was a period, a long period, dating from my childhood until quite recently, when I thought I did.
A period during which I believed that I could keep people fully present, keep them with me, by preserving their mementos, their “things,” their totems.
[…]
In theory these mementos serve to bring back the moment.
In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here. 41-42
“You have your wonderful memories,” people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember. 61
In a few weeks she will have been dead five years.
Five years since the doctor said that the patient had been unable to get enough oxygen through the vent for at least an hour now.
Five years since Gerry and I left her in the ICU overlooking the river at New York Cornell.
I can now afford to think about her.
I no longer cry when I hear her name.
I no longer imagine the transporter being called to take her to the morgue after we left the ICU.
Yet I still need her with me. 145
I myself placed her ashes in the wall.
I myself saw the cathedral doors locked at six.
I know what it is I am now experiencing.
I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.
The fear is not for what is lost.
What is lost is already in the wall.
What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
The fear is for what is still to be lost.
Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her. 179
Quotations 