Memories in the Mist

Often, the past lurks behind a shroud of indistinct implication; not all memories are crystalline. Some, if not most, are shrouded in uncertainty. Many dwell in the deep, dark, and moist places of the subconscious where they remain as notes that resonate but never clearly sing: Sympathetic vibrations of an unsettling past. My memories were jarred open this evening as I discovered a document that was like a Pandora’s box; full of my demons and shut too quickly, trapping hope in the darkness.

Exorcism

The first step in an exorcism is to name the demon. This allows the demon to be identified and recognized. The act of naming is as old as Adam in the garden granting identity to the created order. Too many of my demons remain anonymous. Perhaps it is time to name them, without regard for their baptismal appellatives.

I was looking for a wedding service for Denise, one of my students. She is working on a project for her Marriage and Family course. I told her that I had copies of the service found in the Lutheran Book of Worship and would be happy to copy the service for her. I was looking through zip disks stored for years and stumbled upon a document dated 8 August 2000. I was in therapy at that time. This was my first diagnostic reflection. I read the document, following a period of attempting to recall the password with which I had protected the document. An excerpt follows:

“I have a memory – though I have come to doubt whether or not it happened – of my grandfather, my father and me standing across the street from my grandfather’s barbershop. There we stood, under the quote from Cicero’s Orations: ‘He who violates his oath profanes the divinity of faith itself.’ I recall him telling me that this should be my legacy. He died shortly thereafter. I hope that this memory is real: it is one of the few good memories of my father and of my grandfather that I have.

“What frightens me the most about this is that I can ‘sense’ that this is an older pattern that has been around for years and was simply dismissed as being absent-minded (which I truly am). Times when I was certain that I had done something and found that it had not been completed or, at times, even begun testify to the endurance of this issue.

“I am not a deliberately dishonest person; quite to the contrary, I endeavor to be punctiliously honest. I know the difference between the truth and a lie; the problem is that I seem to have forgotten where the truth lay.”

This is a difficult passage for me. So much of my memory is gone. All I have are shades that move in shadows, implying and resonating never explicit or clear.

“This is the most difficult to attach a trigger to. The damning part of this is that I cannot trust my memory to fairly report how and when this happens. I can only assume from the accusations of dishonesty that this has happened. Issues about which I have been accused of lying to cover myself are issues that I am certain I have done, conversations that I am certain have happened. I can recall details of these conversations, how and when. But it seems now that they never existed. I understand how this could be seen as a lack of integrity. This is the most troubling of all for me.”

It is not just short-term memory. There is more, so much more.

An Appearance of Dishonesty

I strive to be an honest man. I know that I fail, more often than I care to admit to at times. A lie is an intentional attempt to conceal the truth. It is either done by modifying the facts, withholding information, allowing a deception to take place to give an impression that is at variance with the truth. Facts are ideal tools of the lie. Facts are not the truth, but they are good signposts to use to find the truth. I often lose myself in a distortion of the facts. I remember things that were never so. I have no memory of things that I was known to have said. This is part of my motivation with this blog, to bear witness to my life and serve as intentional memory.

At times, it seems to me that I wish to live in a glorious past that never was. There is much that I recall that objectively I know not to have happened. The difficulty is that I often find myself convinced of the veracity of an event or, better stated, the accounting of an event. It is almost as if I will not, cannot, accept the reality and will substitute my own version. Mark this well, this is not an intention. I am often not aware when it happens. I would like to believe that it is happening less than before. I do not know that to be true.

Truth?

There is so much that I have suppressed. I have a troubled childhood. I have a memory of seeing several jars with fetuses in them. My father had a macabre sense about him. There were jars with body parts – I had a human heart as a science fair project, I kept it in my bedroom for years as if this were a normal thing. The child had died at around five years of age. My father obtained the organ for me from pathology. Given this fact, the jars with fetuses is not far from credible. I remember seeing them in a closet, lined up neatly next to the Christmas tree ornaments. Somewhere along the line, they became the stillborn brothers that preceded me into this life and into death. The story about the heart is objectively true. The story about the fetuses is based in fact (they did exist in jars in a closet), but whether they were my stillborn siblings remains an issue of doubt. I sensed that they were and they scared me. The fear was real. The memory flawed.

I wonder how much of my memory is lost and comes back as a shade in the night to haunt the current moment. I try to live in the moment, but they anonymous cries in the dark still haunt me.

Unnamed Anxiety

There are times when a sense memory triggers anxiety. I have learned that this happens and am becoming better at addressing the events that follow in sequence. I know the rush of adrenaline, the tightening of my gut, the feeling that I am alive. I am not always aware of what the story behind the sense memory is. Perhaps it no longer matters. Night-blooming jasmine is one. I love the smell of Jasmine. I hate the smell of Jasmine for what it portends. I can recall, vividly and viscerally, the fights that my parents had when I smell this. I know that I become angry when I smell it. This is an example of a sense memory. Something – something sensed without words to explicate the metaphor – triggers a response and I begin to feel anew.

Feelings scare me. They scare me because they so quickly become destructive. And I’d rather be numb than feeding my adrenaline addiction anew. But the memories persist in the shadows and I am dumb to speak their names…