Remember

VERB

• Have in or be able to bring to one’s mind an awareness of (someone or something that one has seen, known, or experienced in the past)
• Do something that one has undertaken to do or that is necessary or advisable
• [WITH CLAUSE] Used to emphasize the importance of what is asserted
• Bear (someone) in mind by making them a gift or making provision for them
• (remember someone to) Convey greetings from one person to (another)
• Pray for the success or well-being of
• (remember oneself) Recover one’s manners after a lapse

Origin

Middle English: from Old French remembrer, from late Latin rememorari 'call to mind', from re-(expressing intensive force) + Latin memor 'mindful'.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/remember

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On Thursday, I heard a word and took a mental note, recording said word to be used as my blog word for the week. Each day since, I’ve sat willing myself to remember something about the word other than it starting with an ‘R’. To date, I do not remember the word— not even another letter. But ‘remember’— to think about what was and all the ways we get back there— seems a worthy replacement for the missing ‘R’ word.

In an attempt to recall the word, I recounted Thursday evening: 

I left the house and stopped to pick up a grand total of eight coffees, six of them iced, before going to stand in a cold and windy Courthouse Square for Scranton’s 24th Annual Take Back the Night event. Kim and I have been going for years— so many years, in fact, that it seems as though the need for this sort of event shouldn’t even exist anymore. It has kind of always felt this way— that this shouldn’t even be necessary. And yet, it is. Human beings are hurting other human beings and, in the process, they are passing down this staggeringly weighted chain of hurt. The manner with which they hurt varies. The manner in which they hurt, seemingly, does not. One human turns another human into some ‘thing’ or an unimportant no-one  They--the 'hurters' --set up, consciously or not, space where lessening or eliminating the value of another human gives them power and, in doing so, they control as they create fear. Fear, it seems, is the apex of control. 

And so, carrying signs proclaiming their right to Take Back the Night—their right not to fear—a crowd of individuals marched into the square, joining the crowd already gathered. As they did, I ventured onto my phone, in an attempt to distract myself from crying, but found and re-read a terrible story reminding me why we do still need these events. 

You can read it here: 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/23/brown-university-rapist-strangle_n_5201644.html

There was music and information via a handful of speakers and as a bell from a local church tolled, over and over and over again,for far more minutes than I’m sure the broken bell intended to ring, individuals lined up to tell their stories or to share their support for survivors of hurt. 

Some shared to powerfully claim the sharing. 

Some shared in an effort to vent an excess of hurt. 

Others shared poetry that seemingly gave them control by crafting experience into art, using the confines of a rhyme scheme to order what so frequently feels out of control and an irregular meter to honor the truth of that feeling. 

Some speakers you could barely hear, others shouted. 

Some talked off of paper-recorded prepared remarks, while others searched through their words as needed. 

Eventually, the line ended and as the few near-tears dried from the outer edges of my eyes, white candles were handed out and fire was passed. What always strikes me about the candles is that in order to light your own, you need to turn to or go to someone else. The flame needs to be passed. Even for the person with the match or the lighter, someone somewhere else provided the tools. 

We are born into this world reliant and that reliance can be uncomfortable, perhaps even dangerous. To light candles symbolizing how we can take back control, however, and to do so in this dependent way, feels simultaneously terribly sad and remarkably calming. There is, for me, an odd loss in turning to someone else. The lighting of the candles, every year, is itself a cry and a wiping away of tears.

When the event was over, I hung around to help do some clean up. I made another mental note to remember the ‘R’ word. I sat for a few moments on a bench while strangers comforted a young woman crying. I debated going over to see if there was anything I could offer--if there was anything I could do to ease whatever pain was surfacing for her in that moment, but I was too afraid. I walked away from her worried that things from my own life would surface if I talked to her, undeniably raw things I like to think of as comfortably tucked away. I believed this would be a bad thing--this resurfacing--because I would be perpetuating hurt. 

When all was said and done, there was a trip to Perkins for some poorly chosen, unhealthy food, though every morsel was magnificently delicious. Kim and I arrived home exhausted, shortly after midnight, and went to bed. I had quite a difficult time sleeping.

Resurfaced things swirled through my head--recent things and things from far back and the things swirled long enough that they made me dizzy and I spun until I fell into sleep, waking a few hours later to the dog’s plea for a potty outing. When I stood to put her out, I was still dizzy—literally dizzy. I crawled back into bed once she came back up the stairs from her potty stop and fell asleep until the alarm went off at 5:55. I made another mental note to remember the ‘R’ word.

At work, I counted hours until the half day I had scheduled arrived, looking forward to it more than the week's long vacation I'd recently taken. I ran directly from work to the pet store and then to get grocery shopping done for the week. I went home, put groceries away, opened windows, and fell asleep on the couch, listening to birds chirping. Later, I took a cedarwood scented bath and played with ink and water on a new surface—the start of one of two new art projects. When I tired of ink, I went back into the bedroom and laid down, the breeze from my fan drying my damp, cedarwood-scented hair. The sky darkened and the Friday night rain rolled in as we prepared to go see a dear friend perform at a local venue. 

It was in the half-day from nap time to blues time that I deeply relaxed and in which I realized the ‘R’ word was certainly, irreparably, lost.

I did my damnedest to bring back the word on Sunday morning in an effort to post on my regular day, but failed. I still know it only as the ‘R’ word, and nothing more. I started creating a list of ‘R’ words I’d heard on Thursday--REMEMBER, REFLECT, REALIZE, RAPE—and I was still unable to make contact with the right 'R' word. And so, I resigned from the effort to get back to exactly what it was, hoping this process of searching may have been even more valuable. This retracing to remember, even without the finding, calmed me. I felt like I was doing something and the doing gave me some control, even though my memory is not what it once was. 

The reality of chemo-brain is that my pre-chemo brain never came back. Recalling things is so much more difficult now and placing things takes an entirely different kind of effort. I do end up having to retrace paths, looking for markers that are as reliable as Hansel and Gretel’s beans. Retracing and not finding beans I expect to find, where I expect to find them, messes with my head. Missing markers bolsters doubt and doubt keeps me silent. Unremembered memories restrict releasing deep shame and guilt and all of it contains the blame within the confines of a story that is the outline of a life— my life.

That realization is hard.
That 'R' word is hard.

A week past the event, I'm still feeling off. I had a panic attack at work this morning and made every effort to keep it under wraps. I'm a bit lost and a bit afraid. I'm waiting for it to pass and remembering that, though it always comes back, it always does pass.