Memory Loss On Memory Lane

Memory Loss On Memory Lane

(2024/02/17)

When a relationship is broken, one of the many things we lose is mutual recall.

We all get nostalgic feelings from specific things, perhaps a place, a scent, or a song.  For many of us in my generation, TV theme songs can be a real kick down sentimental memory lane.

Lately, part of my late night routine involves the TV being turned on to Catchy TV, and the show “Newhart” – not the “The Bob Newhart Show”, where Bob Newhart plays a psychiatrist, but “Newhart”, where he plays the owner of a little inn, in Vermont.  For me, there is something very emotional about the theme.

The emotion connects directly with my ex, Elizabeth.  But here is the catch; “Newhart” ran from 1982 to 1990.  I did not meet Elizabeth until 1990.  As such, the bulk of the show ran during a previous – and most unsettling – marriage.  The nostalgic tug of the theme does not bring up any of the negative emotions or associations with the first marriage.  The feelings the theme brings up are tied to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth and I were big fans of “Twin Peaks” when we first met.  I have a very strong emotional response to that theme song.  “Twin Peaks” premiered in 1990.  My memory of it and Elizabeth is crystal clear.  But my memory of Elizabeth and “Newhart” is non-existent.  I have only the emotional tug of the theme to give me a clue.  And when I look at the dates “Newhart” aired, she and I could have only watched the last season together, or perhaps reruns.  That said, I do have a vague recollection of us discussing the college drinking game, “Hello Bob”, where everyone is required to take a drink whenever someone says “Hello, Bob” during “The Bob Newhart Show”.  Likewise, there is a nebulous memory of discussing the fun characters Larry, Darryl and Darryl from “Newhart”, but these memories are so foggy, I could have had those debates with anyone.

Oh, how I wish we could have remained a friendship connection, to email each other or to be able to have a dinner every now and then.  I do send her a happy birthday email every year, and I give her a Christmas gift every year – secretly place by her door around midnight on each Christmas Eve, with the card signed, “ . . .  Santa”.  The three dots represent, “I Love You”.  She knows who “Santa” is, but she does not know what the dots mean.  Fourteen years now, Santa has left his gifts.  Fourteen years, and she has sent me a small gift of her own, sent via my daughter.

In 2023, for the first time in those fourteen years, I did get to see her and talk for a bit.  Her cheer and bubble was as effervescent as ever.  She looked happy, and healthy, and honestly, beautiful.  She had moved into a new house, and had an old family clock from my Dad that she no longer had a place for, and she wanted to return it to me.  I crumbled in the meeting.  I was not emotionally strong enough, but all this is a bit of a digression.

Would that I could ask her, “Did we watch ‘Newhart’ often?”  As a couple, you have more RAM and even more ROM – your hardwired memory is larger, and your randomly accessed recall is greater. When a relationship is broken, we lose so many things.  At times, like my first marriage, the breakup was the beginning of a new life.  I was reborn.  The breakup with Elizabeth has left me feeling old, feeble, and forgetful.

What About the Blind Girl?

(Written 12/10/2013, not previously posted, edited 2024 and posted on Tumblr)

The dream started like most dreams do, wispy and vague. There is a gathering of a few people I know, though I cannot identify them. They present me with a horse, of sorts. The horse slowly morphs into a large dog, which we all take for a walk.

As we walk, I become more aware of the group, though I cannot see a face.  I feel comfortable with them.  These are more than merely friends or acquaintances, they are close companions, one of them extremely close, and yet shrouded in a dreamy veil.

I am told, in a rather soft and indirect manner, there is a new person in the group whom they all want me to meet.  The young lady is blind.  She is quite chipper.  The group and I, along with the blind girl, lead the dog with a long red leash as we walk along a low grassy hill in a populated area that feels oddly familiar.

The grassy open area morphs into the interior of a house I have never seen before.  I could not really see it in the dream.  I was aware of walls and rooms, but cannot describe the layout or color, other than to note there are several sets of stairs that have no banisters or railings.  The blind girl walks around the house with ease.

I ask her, “Are you counting?”  Indicating her ability to know where she is by the steps she takes.  She replies, “Yes.”  I am amazed at her ability to walk and talk, and yet keep count.  Suddenly we are all in an upper room.  The blind girl descends set of stairs that has no banister and no wall.  She loses her footing, and falls from sight.  There is a collective gasp.

I lunge toward the edge where she had fallen, and then quickly dash down the stairs, but the blind girl is gone.  There is no sense of urgency.  Instead, there is a feeling that everything is all right. Suddenly a table appears with my ex’s father sitting at it.  He calls his two grown sons to the table for a game of cards, and invites me to play with them.  His demeanor is firm, but not grim.  That was his way.

I place a coaster on the table, and he moves it.  He then notes the table itself, giving it a firm rap with his knuckles.  The bleached wood makes a solid knock sound.  “This is a strong table.  Good wood,” he says.  He grabs the corner and twists it using superman like strength, causing the corner to splinter but not break or detach.

With a spirit like movement, he floats toward me, getting close for a whispered conversation.  “I had a thing for one of my secretaries once,” he says.  I look at him shocked.  He questions me, “But if the house is burning?”

I reply, “Well, I would be the last out.  Everyone else goes first.  That’s my job.”

“Exactly,” he states, with a sense of pleasure in my reply.

While this conversation takes place, there is a sense the hosts within the house are in chit chat conversation.  Some are wondering about the blind girl, while others are talking about ‘her.’  The woman they indicate is my ex, the daughter of the overbearing figure who is questioning me.  I could feel my heart flutter and nervousness rise.

The father turns back toward the card table, and I turn around looking deeper into the house.  I see that I am in a well-adorned living room.  I wonder where the blind girl has gone.  Then I see a young lady whom I seem to know, in a dreamlike fashion.  I recognize her as a dear friend of my ex.  She is a tiny little thing of a woman, putting on her coat and preparing to leave.

She comes over to me and gives me a good-bye hug.  The hug is friendly, with an understanding.  I begin to choke up.  She and I slowly spin a quarter turn, and then the friend releases her grip. There in front of me is my ex.  She did not look anything like she really looks, except in the face.

She has a classic hourglass figure, and wears a gown of day-glow orange.  Despite the seemingly garish color, the gown is fashioned like Cinderella’s dress, and in the foggy muted nature of the dream, creates a glowing princess visage.  She comes to me, wrapping her arms around me.  I hug her, and we hold each other close.  She does not feel like her real self, the shape is all wrong, but it is she.  Her emotion, her personality, her warmth comes through loud and clear.

Like a figurine atop a music box, we began to turn in a slow, floating spin.  The emotions well up in me.  I fight hard to contain a wail.  My eyes water as I soak up the warmth of the embrace.  For a moment, from a third person perspective, I can see my ex turn her head and look at me, though I do not look at her.  She is smiling.  Knowing her happiness adds to the depth of my feeling.  It takes more effort to contain a weep of despair.

I concentrate on my breathing to hold back the emotional onslaught. In and out, breath after breath.

Dream becomes half dream, which becomes waking consciousness. I became aware of my actual, real life breathing.  The breathing of the dream in time with my real, deep, deliberate breaths.  Emotions crawl over me like a pet cat seeking rest.

I fight back tears.

I Wonder

(2024/02/14)

We did not fight or argue,

Though we drifted apart.

It has been years,

And on this Valentine’s Day,

And every day,

I wonder why.

I Am Alone

Originally Written and Posted July 10, 2012, edited in 2024

I am alone.

The dream was like most dreams.  Something observed.  Something I was a part of, yet detached from.  It began as an odd, nonsensical musing about the American Indians battling their oppressors.  The scene quickly shifted to strange, almost Dickens-like imagery, an odd series of narrow water locks, more like flumes, and youngsters fooling their betters out of cups of cream with feats of magic and escape-style trickery.  Large whale-like creatures rocked the small boats that worked through the locks, each whale larger than the one before, as if Escher himself had a hand in the maze like twists and turns of the locks, and the creation of the whales.

Suddenly we were in a home.  I say, ‘we’, while I was clearly all by myself, I could feel her.  I was more than just me – I was a part of a ‘we’.  She was in another room, getting ready for something.  This home was not like any place I have ever been, and yet it felt familiar. Upscale, with all the flourishes that bring her comfort.  She was bustling about, filling the air with her bounce, as she always did.  I was in a vulnerable, prone spot in some back corner of some back room.

She appeared in the open door of the room where I lay, and said, “Well, I’m on my way. Won’t be back tonight, and then tomorrow, we’ll be off.”  She had that slight English lilt that she adds when she uses her favorite British phrases.  But, “we’ll be off,” did not mean we were going for some ride.  As casually as she said it, the phrase was devastatingly final.  Panic ran through me.

I chased after her as she stepped out of the front door.  “What?” I yelled, but she did not hear or did not respond at first.  Outside, the yard is covered with the flotsam of a moving day.  Neighbors and passersby are picking at the debris like crows on a carcass, yet the sun was shining and the air was damp with morning dew.  I made it to the porch where I felt the need to cower behind a pillar, in retreat from the busybody collectors.  She cheerily flipped her shawl over her shoulder and helped a Mr. Butler to negotiate the purchase of a garden hose by one of the neighbors.

Then she turned, looked at me and responded to my earlier cry.  “Oh, didn’t you know?  I won’t be coming home tonight, and then tomorrow, we’ll be off.”  I understood it from our reality.  She would be working out of town, and appended to that was, “we’ll be off.”  Not “off” as in leaving for a trip, but “off” as in the turning out of a light.  I felt the sorrow swell up in me.  I could feel the corners of my mouth curl down, like a child about to bawl.  I clung to the bit of column I crouched behind, hiding from the crows.  I peeked out to catch a fading glimpse of her as she gave Mr. Butler a final word and began to head to her car.  “I’m sorry,” I cried, the tears swelling up as I cowered and clung to the pedestal, avoiding the gaze of the neighbors.  I watched her as she drove away.

I woke, the sorrow thick.  I am alone.

Tale of the Tat

I was recently asked if I have any tattoos…

Elizabeth and I had been together for about 18 years, and married for about 14, when I walked into the den and said, “I’m thinking about getting a tattoo.”

Her response was, “If you do, you’ll never again have sex with me.”

Do not judge her.  I had no tattoos when we met.  In her mind, I wasn’t “that” guy, and I am not that guy.  I was wrestling with a changing body in a changing world.  Andropause is only an excuse in some regards, but hormones are strange drivers.  Regardless, she had every right to dislike the idea of having to look at permanent scar where one had not been before, just as I had the right to consider willfully creating one.

Her response struck me.  After my first marriage, a burden had been lifted from me in one regard.  That marriage was aggressive and angry.  That ex was controlling and manipulative.  Freed from her, I had started to find myself again when I met Elizabeth.  She supported me and helped me in wonderful ways.

Unknowingly, her response to my thought of a tattoo brought up feelings from my previous marriage.  The feeling that I was no longer in control of my own being.  This only added to the wacky hormones and feelings of bewilderment and isolation I was experiencing.  I did not resent her response, but I did not know how to deal with it either.

At a following Christmas, she gave me a gift certificate to a local tattoo artist whom she had selected, expressing she realized it was wrong of her to control what I might do with my own body.

I appreciate her understanding, but now I was left with a new quandary.  The gift represented a new form of control.  I did not get to pick where I would have the tattoo done, or when, or who would do it.  There felt some restriction based on price, size and perhaps body location.  I had envisioned passing some martial arts test in my instructor’s city, and celebrating with a tattoo.  Now, I had a gift from a woman whom I love dearly, a woman who does not like tattoos, for a set amount within a given time-frame.  The feeling went from, “you can’t” to “you must”.  Again, I felt left out of the equation.

It took time.  Months passed while I internally debated the situation.  Do I or don’t I?  I am sure Elizabeth wondered through all that time when I would come home to show her the dreaded tattoo.  I finally expressed that I just couldn’t do it, because I would be doing it for the wrong reason.  I hated wasting her gift, but I just couldn’t use it.  Sadly, this all happened near the end of things.  It was swept up as part of it, though I feel it was not.  It may be an example perhaps, but not a part.

The world has changed since Elizabeth and I met.  Tattoos have moved from accepted to expected.  I was recently asked if I have any tattoos.  I do not, and I never will.  As an act of contrition, I will not get something that would upset her so, even though we are no longer together.  This is my choice, even though she will never know - an act of my love.

2024/02/22

Unforeseen

The greatest hurt…

That I am no longer allowed to tell you, I love you.

2024/02/27