Pushing Past the Night (2009)
“Our memories don’t normally go back that far. They get erased. Some impressions may remain, like a spin on the merry-go-round, fish in an aquarium, a ride on a motorbike, a scolding from your parents, a joke by an uncle.
I have two memories from that period. The first is from Sunday, May 14. It’s a vague memory of a wonderful feeling, and the only real, palpable recollection that I have of my father. The second is from the morning of Wednesday, May 17, the day of his murder. It’s sharp, detailed, precise.
It’s as if I had put all my childhood thoughts in a box, a special place I had created where they could survive intact the oblivion of time and maturity. For years I kept them inside me. To avoid ruining them, I took them out gingerly, in the dark, at night, before falling asleep. Then one day I shared them with my mother, but I was already in high school, and it was not until the trials that I spoke openly about my memories of the day that my father died. At one point, however, I re...alized that my telling and retelling of this memory was destroying it, like the copy of a film that’s been seen too many times: the image deteriorates and whole frames are lost.MoreLess
I have two memories from that period. The first is from Sunday, May 14. It’s a vague memory of a wonderful feeling, and the only real, palpable recollection that I have of my father. The second is from the morning of Wednesday, May 17, the day of his murder. It’s sharp, detailed, precise.
It’s as if I had put all my childhood thoughts in a box, a special place I had created where they could survive intact the oblivion of time and maturity. For years I kept them inside me. To avoid ruining them, I took them out gingerly, in the dark, at night, before falling asleep. Then one day I shared them with my mother, but I was already in high school, and it was not until the trials that I spoke openly about my memories of the day that my father died. At one point, however, I re...alized that my telling and retelling of this memory was destroying it, like the copy of a film that’s been seen too many times: the image deteriorates and whole frames are lost.MoreLess
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