I Don't Remember: A Short Story

I don’t remember the last time.

When you were my sidekick, more familiar than my own face in the mirror. When you were my constant. When I only had to think of you, and I’d hear you. Feet on stairs, the sound of the back door opening. Our conversation carried on from hours before. When we were seamless. When any earlier quarrel was forgotten in seconds. I didn’t need to be forgiven or invited. I could just bend down next to you on the slope in the garden, and dig.

I don’t remember the last time we walked home together. The last time we shared a ten pence ice lolly. The last time we cycled down the steep hill, bumping over the curbs. I don’t remember the last time we ate together at the table in the kitchen with the fold down ends and the painting above of some county fair. I don’t remember what we had or if we finished with Angel Delight or tinned fruit.

I don’t remember the last time we slept next to one another under canvas. The last time we jumped into a swimming pool together. The last roundabout you spun me on and if one of the tiny scars I now carry is from a fall. I don’t remember the last time we made a camp in the woods with fern leaves. The last time we sang along to the same song. The last time we used our quilts to make a fort and slept behind it in a pile of limbs with the morning sun making the curtains glow cranberry red. I don’t remember the last time you held my hand or cleaned my wheels. The last time we sat for a school photo with wonky fringes and un-ironed collars.

I don’t remember your last childhood birthday cake, or who came to the party. I don’t remember what you wanted for Christmas when you were nine or if you got it. I don’t remember the last time we explored the end room of the stables together or hiked through the field to the canal. I don’t remember where our CB radios went, or when that truck wallpaper got scraped off your bedroom wall. What was under the trucks? Did we peel it away in strips? Did we help at all?

I don’t remember the last time you pinched me, or we played that card game called Slam! on your bedroom floor with that big piece of wood as a table. When we jumped on a trampoline, and I went up as you went down. How old were we when we last went on the blue see saw in our garden? The one we placed too near to the willow tree. When did we last get told off for something? When did we last laugh until we had to stuff fists in mouths and shudder in horrified mirth? When did I last hear you cry?

I don’t remember.  I don’t know what day of the week the last Christmas we woke up together was on and who got up first. I don’t remember the colour of your favourite trainers or which ice cream you liked best from the Neapolitan tub. Strawberry? It hurts to try and remember. It gives me brain freeze to try and walk backwards.Once, I would have known all these things. How long we could joint skip for. The last time we picked pebbledash off the side of our house or strawberries in fields or touched an electric fence.

Once I could have told you. I would have held these things in my mind, like pebbles. But we’ve grown and the years have turned and at some point, I had to empty my pockets. I had to let go. Now my hands are full of today and yesterday and last week and I can’t remember the last time we played hide and seek or the last piggyback you gave me. When was the last time we shut the front door together and did you ever give back your key?

I didn’t learn from this loss. I can add to it.

I can’t remember the last time I carried my eldest daughter or the last time I hoisted my last baby onto my hip. I cannot remember the last time they played in the dirt in the garden. When they last came in with muddy hands and faces and had to be bathed in a line in the tub like we once were. When did they stop using sippy cups?

I remember so many things. Tragedies and heartbreaks and lyrics. I have filled the anthill of my mind with tiny trivial grains of sand. With days that do not matter and memories I do not want. So much has slid away, and I cannot claw it back.

Is it enough that I wish I could remember? That if we could do it all again, I’d make a note. I’d hold you tighter. That I wouldn’t forget to remember.