Clearing

If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around to hear, does it make noise?

I remember this question from my childhood and probably gave more thought to the concept than was necessary or even sensical. My mind fixates on a similar yet different question now. If all memories of me are lost, do I still have a past? If I am the only one who remembers myself, am I then a figment of my own imagination? How would I know?

We are validated through the acknowledgments of people in our lives. When those acknowledgments are gone, what happens to our sense of self?

I am disappearing.

Every morning I greet my dad, wondering if this will be the day that I cease to exist. My identity sometimes flickers, like a candle struggling to endure through the draft from a cracked window. The flame will eventually go out. It is inevitable. I look at my hand and expect my fingers to grow trasparent. It is my dad whose mind is being cleared, but I feel as though I am being erased in the process.

Each night I show my dad to his bedroom. A large black and white portrait of a happy wedding couple hangs on the wall above the headboard. More photos sit on the dresser. My dad looks at these photos now and smiles. Sometimes he recognizes himself in the photos. Other times he comments on how lovely "that couple" looks.

My parents recently celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary. One month after their anniversary, my mom celebrated her 90th birthday. A week after that she passed away. Occasionally he notices her absence, and is satisfied with my explanation that she is visiting her sister. He doesn't remember that my aunt passed earlier in the year.

The house is full of the last 55 years of his life. Furniture brought from their very first apartment, trinkets from the various places they traveled to, photos of my brother and I through all the stages of our lives... Memories are everywhere – except in his mind. The memories there are gone. Now there is only now.

How long will I be in his now?

We talk about clearing as an emotional reset, but not all clearing is intentional. Sometimes we are on the wrong side of the clearing, and there is nothing we can do about it. The act of creating space, stripping things from our cluttered lives, is celebrated. What about being cleared? When the clearing is within ourselves or someone we love, and it isn't conscious or intentional, the resulting void is not welcome. It does not provide room for growth or improvement. That space will never be filled in.

-written through the Winter Writing Sanctuary by Beth Kempton at This is it. (Life, by Beth Kempton)