Day 210: What I Want to Forget

I'm part of a 30-day grief writing course.  Today's writing is in response to a prompt. In the last post, I addressed What do I want to remember? Today I finally feel ready to write about What do I want to forget? 

------------------------------------

The things I want to forget are scattered across

the terrain of my interior self like landmines.

A truck backing up on a narrow street in Portland

during my visit this past summer- beeeep beeep beeep

And I am suddenly walking into that hospital room again-

beeeep beeep beeep- I am approaching his bed. beeeep beeep beeep –

The truck is continuing to back up and it won’t stop making

that hideous sound. I cannot get the sound out of my head.

I am placing my palms flat against his warm face. I am kissing his bruised

and swollen eyelids. beeeep beeep beeep- I am kissing the tip of his nose.

The truck is continuing to back up. It is beeping and beeping and

I am wishing it would roll right over me. How is no one hearing this?

The only indication that he is alive is that sound beeeep beeep beeep-

and the rising and falling of his chest, which he isn’t even doing on his own.

I want to forget that beeping sound, the external measure of his beating heart.
I know that beat. I heard it through his chest with my head pressed tightly.

Boom. Explosion. Where is there to hide when the sharp pieces start

to fly? I want to forget. I want to forget that I ever heard that sound.

I am standing with my childhood friend and my bright-eyed Goddaughter

in an interactive exhibit at a museum. She is pretending to be a vet.

Stuffed animals are everywhere. A pretend clinic. Stethoscopes. Little

ones running here and there caring for their sick patients. They are laughing.

It was the sight of the little white lab coats that set off the first mine.

Turning to see the stainless steel exam table set off the rest of them.

My breath was sucked right out of me and while everyone else, in slow

motion, went about their regularly scheduled activities, I was hit with a

near-fatal blow. Blows. To the heart. To the stomach. To the head.

I want to forget. I want to forget those white coats and that silver table.

I want to forget being led to a room to collect his ashes. I want to forget

walking in front of the family, as though I could protect them from what

we were about to see. I want to forget that blue sign above the door. The

absurdity of the translation. “Comb Out Bone.” I want to forget that we

were being led to a room called “Comb Out Bone.” I want to forget the

moment we realized what we were about to see and how Gareth’s

brother led his mom away, down the hall, where she could be shielded

from the sight. I want to forget how Gareth’s father and I remained, how

I held on to his right arm. How I held so tightly to that arm to keep myself

upright. I want to forget that what I was seeing threatened to bring me to the ground.

I want to forget the large glass window that separated Gareth’s father and I

from what almost looked like a staged setting: A sparse room. Two men in

white lab coats. A stainless steel examination table in front of two stainless

steel doors with powerful latches. I want to forget that it looked like square

doors to a walk-in freezer. I want to forget how the two men, the two men

in white lab coats, each held a door handle and blasted the room, their faces

my heart, singed my eyes, with the heat. I want to forget how momentarily

the escaping heat made everything wiggle. Made everything distort.

My Goddaughter is dressed in a white lab coat and putting a pretend

puppy upon a stainless steel exam table. She is checking its heart.

My heart has been pierced by a thousand pieces of shrapnel. I cannot

remove them without threatening to bleed out more. I want to forget.

I want to forget these two men in white lab coats with white masks and

white caps. I want to forget how they reached into that scorching hole

and pulled out the bones of my love. Pulled the long tray right out-
the tray that held the body of my love. I want to forget seeing that tray

slide out onto the table. I want to forget seeing his bones. I want to forget
recognizing the pieces- a piece of his leg. A piece of his jaw. His skull.

This was what was underneath everything when we were wrapped in

each other’s arms. Here was his structure. Here were the pieces of my love.

I want to forget. The industrial-sized dustbin. The two brooms held by the

two men in white coats. The sweeping. The sweeping of my love’s bones.

My Goddaughter makes her puppy hop up and down on the table. She

has cured it. Miraculous little doctor in a white coat. She has brought it

back from the dead. I want to forget that my love could not be brought

back. I want to forget seeing him, that strong and beautiful man, reduced

to segments of identifiable bone. I want to forget that I know what happens

between death and picking up of someone’s cremains. I want to forget.

I want to forget the careful way the two men, the two men in white coats,

swept up all of my love. Every last piece of bone and scattering of dust.

I want to forget those two brushes dancing back and forth across the

surface of that metal table, sweeping up my love. Sweeping him into a dustpan.

I want so desperately to forget the sound. The sound of the grinding of his bones
in a machine into a fine powder. I want to never remember how ashes are made.

I want to forget that it takes approximately 3.5 hours to burn away the man

I love and approximately 30 seconds to grind his bones into a white dust.

I want to forget standing there, holding onto his father’s arm, and watching

this all take place. I want to forget that I was setting up landmines across the

terrain of my interior self to detonate later. Where is there to hide? Where

can one go when the blast occur, without warning, inside of oneself?

I want to forget the ceremonious way the two men in white coats tapped

his ashes out on a long sheet of white paper. How the paper was folded and

folded again, until the shape of it fit exactly into the dark wooden box we

had picked out. I want to forget we had picked out a box. I want to forget

how this box was passed through a cutout in that glass window to another

man. A man in a sharply pressed suit and a blue crisp shirt. I want

to forget the white gloves. The pair of white gloves given to Gareth’s father
so he could receive the box of his son’s ashes in the customary fashion. I

want to forget the man in the suit wrapping Gareth’s box in white fabric.

Careful folds. Precise angles. A strong knotted finish on the top. I want

to forget thinking Gareth would have appreciated the ancient tradition

of this all. That he would have found this part to be acceptable. Just right.

I want to forget watching the man in the suit face Gareth’s father, holding

the box chest-high. I want to forget seeing the gloved hands of Gareth’s father

reaching out and taking the box. The bow that followed from the man in

the suit. The return bow from Gareth’s father, now holding his son’s cremains.

“He’s still warm,” he said. “I can feel him. He’s still warm.” I want to

forget that he said this. That I heard it. I want to forget the sight of Gareth’s

father standing there, holding the ashes of his son, his beautiful boy, and

saying “This reminds me of when I held him in the hospital for the first time.”

“Warm. Bundled up.” I want to forget how he looked down at that box. How

a father held his son once and once again 34 years later. I want to forget this.

Just weeks ago I was sitting across the table at a local bakery in southern

Illinois meeting with my grief therapist. It was our last meeting before returning

to Korea. “Remember- you don’t have to be the keeper of all memories,” she said.

“I think you’re trying to be there for Gareth- for his family- by taking careful note

of everything, everything that happened. Everything you saw, felt, experienced.

You have assigned yourself the duty of keeping careful record of everything.”

“One day,” she told me, “you will give yourself permission to not remember it

all. Not see it all in your mind in such great detail.” I want this. I want to forget.