By Rex Catubig

 

“WATCH out, you will crush the food” Arman yelled as I plopped myself on the passenger seat of his truck. I was taken aback. “How did it get there?”, I asked incredulously, referring to my Sharon loot. “You were holding it and you put it there”, he pressed. “Did I? I don’t remember. I thought you took it with you”, I was adamant. “You’re hopeless. You’re getting senile”, he chided me.

Maybe I was.

We were at a party at a friend’s scenic retreat. And as was his wont, the over eager host, kept pouring Chardonnay in my fluted glass, toast after toast, until less than a third was left of the bottle.

Maybe it was the wine.

Or maybe, we just instinctively block out certain images and memories in favor of that which delights us, or amuses us, or evokes warm feelings in us–leaving out the clutter of trivia in the dustbin of our minds.

For sure, the evening rendezvous at the picturesque place left indelible impressions on our woozy minds. The company, the genial atmosphere, the food, the wine, and the scintillating conversations were fodder to the bewitched mind.  It was fit for a midsummer night’s dream.

Free flowing, it was a night of double entendre, where you drop the genteel veneer of studied pretense, let your hair down, cast aside any semblance of modesty, and just fire away with sizzling vignettes of the past.

Yet not all remember. There were guarded moments.  There was a mental hesitation to recall and recreate what had happened, either because it was not personally significant or that it would just singe the already healed heart. Naturally, some played devil advocate and playfully spited those in-denial and splashed them awake with the cool water of realization. The one that knew too much stayed quiet and chose discretion as the better part of derring-do.

Meanwhile, in a sudden break in the boisterous party, owing to the passing of an angel as the saying goes, a friend turned serious and confided that he found my old family house more to his liking, than my new one. Which is not surprising as, like everyone else who hung out in the house, he must have left foot prints of himself there—happy ghosts of our old selves celebrating halcyon days.

Indeed, we leave shadows and residues of ourselves in all the nooks and crannies where life takes us.  They fossilize but miraculously spring to life when the opportune time pokes them into becoming anew.

Beyond Alzheimer’s or dementia, when we begin to lose track of the moment, hiraeth would harken us back to these wonderful times, at those magical castles of the mind, where the burning images of the past are filtered through and seen softly with loving recollection.

Regret, remorse, resentment, all these are refracted with the prism of love, kindness, and acceptance. We no longer hold grudges, we try to clutch on to beautiful gossamer moments, press them gently to our sighing chest and let them glide through the sentimental rhythm of our nostalgic heart.

You may forget things, but you begin to feel forever.

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