The Forgetting
There is a profound scene in the movie Beaches about grief and memory.
C.C. (Better Midler) walks into Hillary’s (Barbara Hershey’s) room only to find Hillary desperately, frantically searching through boxes of photographs.
Concerned and alarmed, C.C. asks,
“Hillary? Honey? What’s wrong? What are you looking for?”
Hillary, ill, exhausted and on the cusp of death herself, breathlessly replies,
“My mother’s hands. I can’t remember my mother’s hands. I know there is a photo of my mother’s hands. I need to remember my mother’s hands.”
I recalled that scene the other night, when I came across a WhatsApp message from my recently deceased Tío Miguel. I had forgotten I had his voice recorded, and as I listened to his voice, I realized that a part of me sometimes has trouble remembering my father’s voice.
My Tío Miguel, my mother’s youngest brother, died suddenly in Guayaquil, Ecuador on Monday, March 11, 2024, at the age of 71. He would have been 72 in April. Although his health had been declining, his death was unexpected and it has hit my family hard.
For me, it has also conjured the loss of my beloved father, gone since November 2011. Since his traumatic death, I have noticed that all other losses bring his absence to mind.
Like my Tío, my father was also 71 when he died. My mind keeps reflecting on my Tío’s life, the time he and my father shared (they met in 1965, the year my parents met) and the years my Tío lived that my father did not.
Since losing my Tío, my father has been in my dreams, vivid images of him that have me awaking disoriented, as if he had come back to life. Only to remember, however, that he, and my Tío, are both now gone.
They now only exist in recordings, photos, in memories, stories, and in dreams.
In hearing my Tío’s voice, it upset me to realize that I cannot always remember my father’s voice. A voice I heard for 33 years.
I can certainly remember it if I try hard enough but in a way, I have forgotten it, and in hearing my Tío’s voice, I desperately wished to remember my father’s voice.
This is why the scene from Beaches came to mind — a scene that is so powerful and relatable.
There is a forgetting in grief.
The details of who our dead were are not always easy to conjure, and there will come moments when we are desperate to remember those details.
The details that made our dead who they were.
The details that are evidence of them having lived.
I know I haven’t truly forgotten my father’s voice — I never will — but given that I have not heard it in over a decade now, hearing my recently deceased Tío’s voice made me long to also hear my father’s.
The grief we feel for our dead never evaporates — it ebbs and flows.
It is a dull ache, that depending on context, can grow sharper and even temporarily cripple us.
Like I have done since the day I lost my father, I will now adjust to life without my Tío’s physical presence in the world.
Over time, the details of who my Tío was will escape me, and I will desperately look for evidence of the life he lived, of the Tío I knew and loved.
There is a forgetting in grief.
Perhaps it is our brain’s way of protecting us as we navigate life without beloved individuals. Individuals who either gave us life or who had a hand in making us the people we are.
I will choose to see this forgetting as just that — a protection.
And know that it is temporary.
The loss of our loved ones is permanent but the forgetting is not.
They live in us and despite the details we will sometimes forget, they do return to us.
They return to us in recordings, photos, in memories, stories, and in dreams.
