today I went...somewhere

Today I went with friends to take gifts to another friend who is recuperating in a nursing home from knee surgery. It just so happens this is the same nursing home my father spent some of his last days. At first I wasn't going to go but with the support of others I figured the frivolity would carry me along.

I walked in the door carrying the box of gifts and my friend mentioned that just down the hallway was my friend's (Ann) room. This was the same hallway my father's room had been. I looked at the wood paneling, which oddly enough, I remembered. What happened next was unexpected. It was as if the wood paneling were a page from a diary of all the experiences I had had with my mother and father in that place. The memories seemed to tumble out of the wood as fast as I could notice them. I turned to Joyce and asked to be excused from the visit. She told me she could never return to the place where her father died and she understood.

I walked out and sat under a tree waiting for my friends to end their visit. But out or in, the memories continued to flood my mind. I will never go in there again. I wondered how a piece of paneling could trigger so many thoughts. I marveled at how the brain stores information quite without our noticing.

I don't regret the experience and wish I could have gotten past it to see Ann. She lost her mother unexpectedly in a car accident. No chance even to say good-bye. She knows the experience of painful memories. Her mother died more than 14 years ago.


Why does grief take so long to go away?