Today it’s raining. I wish I could remember what the weather was like on that day. Some things slip away from the memory. Or they were never there, never an important part of the experience. I think perhaps it wasn’t raining.
Those 21 years ago.
I remember small things. Like having to ask my cousin to drive me down the coast. That Sam couldn’t drive me, that his parents couldn’t. That I didn’t have my licence then. So, calling my cousin to take me to that then unknown moment in my life.
A moment that probably will always be in my memory. Even though I have no idea what the conversation was about with him, in the car. No idea what I was wearing. No idea if it was raining. I think it was a Thursday. I can’t remember. (I just checked, and it was a Thursday). Why did my brain remember that piece of information…
What I do remember, more distinctly than most anything else in my life, is the way that my father fell into my body when I first stepped into the emergency room of the hospital. The way his whole weight collapsed onto me. Me being the first to arrive, before my siblings. Me being the one there. After he’d held it together for however long. How his arms went around me and that was it.