When Memories Fade

Memory is a funny thing. We assume we’re carrying around a reasonably accurate record of our lives, when most of us are just walking around with the highlights and a few completely random details.

Ask a mother about childbirth 30 years later, and she’ll tell you about the miracle of holding her baby. Ask her during labor and I’m certain “miracle” wasn’t the word she was using. Family vacations improve with age, too. We remember the beach and the sunsets. Somehow the six-hour car ride and the arguments with your sibling’s fade.

I’ve decided memory isn’t a historian. It’s an editor. And I’m not sure I like its version.

A photograph is different. It captures a moment in time. Twenty-five years later, the photograph hasn’t changed. We have. Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved photography. It preserves the people, the places, the bad hairstyles (beehives and Farrah Fawcett flips) and the smiling family that may not have been speaking to one another ten minutes earlier.

This week marks 25 years since my husband, Paul, died. His memory has faded.

I haven’t forgotten Paul, but I’ve forgotten enormous pieces of the life we lived. I don’t remember most of our conversations or disagreements, or the thousands of ordinary Mondays that made up a marriage. I remember his laugh and his cologne, which I told him he wore way too much of.

I still have a bottle of his cologne on my bedside table. Most of the time I forget it’s there, but occasionally I open the drawer, take off the cap, and breathe it in. One whiff brings back memories of him and our love.

Then there are the butterflies. For new readers, this is where most people roll their eyes.

The first gift Paul ever gave me was a silk scarf covered in butterflies. It was beautiful, and I still have it. After Paul died, yellow butterflies seemed to be everywhere for weeks. They followed me, not only in the garden but outside my doctor’s office window. Every year since, a huge yellow butterfly has appeared around the anniversary of his death. I can’t explain it. I just know I expect it.

This summer I was in Wisconsin when a beautiful yellow butterfly appeared on a flowering bush outside my cabin door, right in the middle of the wildfire smoke. It was pretty, but something wasn’t right. Any reasonable person would have considered the annual butterfly obligation fulfilled.

I did not.

Wisconsin didn’t count.

This was the 25th anniversary. I needed the yellow butterfly in Memphis, Tennessee. Apparently, sometime during the past quarter century, I established geographic requirements for annual large yellow butterflies.

When I got back to Memphis, there were butterflies everywhere. Unfortunately, they were black and blue. Any other year I would have enjoyed them. This year I looked at every one and thought, “Wrong butterfly.”

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve exhibited a high level of anxiety over this. The yellow butterfly wasn’t here yet. I knew it was ridiculous. Butterflies don’t keep calendars. Still, this was the 25th anniversary. I wanted my butterfly, and I wanted it now.

Then I remembered something.

Last month I finally got rid of Paul’s mattress.

Suddenly the missing butterfly made perfect sense. Paul was pissed.

I’d gotten rid of his mattress, and apparently there would be no annual appearance. Was this rational? Of course not. Did I believe it? Absolutely.

Finally, this week, as I was looking out the window, there was my yellow butterfly. Not as big as normal. Maybe Paul was on GLP-1.

There are no words for my sense of relief. I let out a huge breath.

“Thank heavens you showed up. There you are.”

Apparently, Paul had gotten over the mattress. And the miracle of God’s creation and timing, it had shown up right on time.

That’s the peculiar thing about memory. It fades, but not evenly. Whole stretches of our lives disappear while tiny details remain astonishingly clear.

I can’t remember thousands of ordinary days I spent with Paul. But I can open a drawer and recognize his cologne instantly.

And apparently, I can still get anxious when one very large yellow butterfly is late for an appointment it never made.

In loving memory of Paul G. Gurley, 1946–2001.