Dress Sizes

I dislike making lists.  I pride myself on my memory, and ability to unfold the recent events that might make up the numbered items on the twice-folded piece of paper shoved into the right pocket of a pair of blue jeans and referred to as needed.   It goes against my grain, and if I was to peel back the layers, I’m sure I’d find that the act of scribing notes to myself is associated with mental weakness.  It’s not, of course, it’s a pride thing. I have amazing short-term recall, but it’s the older memories that blur between fact and fiction.

When Billy started having his minute memory losses, ultimately diagnosed as a malignant brain tumor, I started writing, a way of making lists I think.  I didn’t want to remember his march to death, but to remember how I got there, which eventually lead to the unthinkable, ‘where do I want to go’ question.  His journey, a fight to his right at life, wasn’t so different from mine, only I didn’t have doctors poisoning my body with chemicals, and cutting me with knives, rather I did that myself with introspection.  I clearly had the better end of the deal, and now that Billy is gone having lost his fight, and I am still here, fighting a different battle—acceptance for those things I cannot change.

I didn’t take if lying down because it felt too much like a shrug of the shoulders, and oh well that is life, what could I do about the cards I was dealt sort of feeling.  I don’t know if my life is predetermined, and regardless of what I do differently now if it will change the events ahead of me, or if I do alter my course now if I’ll end up at the same place regardless, who knows for sure.  Acceptance of loss didn’t mean that I had to surrender or find a rocking chair for the front porch, and wait around for my spirit to leave me.  It simply meant I had a choice.

The world, not the one I had imagined, was at my feet waiting for my next step.  It was a powerful realization for me.  All my days leading up to that moment I acted without consideration, and a part of me will always, but at the instance I could either give up on life and wait out the rest of my days with a permanent scowl with lines etched either side of my nose and the sparkle gone from my chocolate colored eyes, or I could place my foot hard on the road ahead of me and find a new path.

Writing is a manner of making lists, be it abstract.  If I write about writing, I am making points, illustrating its benefits, if I am writing about unrequited love, a persistent theme in my shorts, I can see a list beneath my lines about discovery and understanding, and if I am writing about any other topic, love, family, or lovers, frail families, failed lover, or loveless lovers and families, there are singular thoughts strung together, an uber list in story form.  Maybe I do like making lists, or maybe I’m afraid of forgetting.