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Hallway lights have dimmed as I “wiped” the last of the flatware, metal cups, and then folded the towel while mom put away the plates and prepared for the end of another unremarkable day. Our steps resonate while we walk across the aged linoleum.
As hard as I might, I cannot really recall any interaction or idle chit-chat between us. I could not claim that we did not interact, just that nothing was significant enough to remain intact.
Research suggests emotional memory seems to occupy the primitive parts of the brain, particularly the brain stem. Dementia (good to know) did not affect these areas, meaning that emotional memory can remain intact. Retrieval is possible. Over time, perhaps bits and pieces will eventually float to the top, or reassemble. Long-term memory has unlimited capacity, and I can store memories until my dying day. They just get filtered out and sink to the bottom until a fact, sound, smell, image, or neurons gather. Like writing a memoir.
He reenlisted and assigned to his previous post, back to familiar territory, Brooklyn, New York, for him, for us, a strange new arena, a barren social venue, and foreign cultural experience.
We would soon position our blackout shades over the bars and mom would state quietly, “lights out.” This was our cue to secure our position in our respective beds, or in my case, a cot. Expecting the darkness, the nothingness that encased every corner of the apartment. Nothing discernible. No light could squeeze out, revealing our existence.
As a result, and to this day, I cannot sleep in a dark, noise-free room. Placed in that situation, I lay listening to random sounds or the Voices In My Head. The only way I might prevent those voices is to have the TV playing quietly in the background. That is the only white noise that might give me respite.
Here we, encircled by approximately 2,738,172 humans, give a take a few hundred on any day, crammed into 69.2 square miles of surface area of which 27% is water. How could there possibly be no environmental noise or voices? For me, silence seems to cloak my memories. I can see vivid pictures of places but “hear” little.
At night I can hear the sound of jets transverse the airspace above and hear mom quietly counting, how many and wondering friendlies or an enemy to be feared
After listening to nothingness, I slipped into slumber, alone. Huddled under covers as the space cools.
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