Tell Me Who You Were

By D. J. Pratt © 2026

“Have you stayed with us before, Sir?”

Every time I check in, it’s the same question.

“Yes,” I say. “Every year.”

Why did that question feel so hard?

“An anniversary?”

The answer should be simple too – but the truth is painfully personal.

And so… ephemeral.

“Yeah…? Of sorts.”

A yearly pilgrimage might be closer, but my story is too fragile to explain.

He wouldn’t care that I come chasing a ghost.

No sense in finishing.

And to say, “I’m here to visit my wife” sounds insane.

It started so long ago. We were staying at this hotel when it happened. When everything changed.

I drag my overnight bag up to room 411. April 11, 2004 was the day. Is that a symmetry or a mockery? I don’t know.

But so much has happened since.

And so little.

I hold the keycard over the lock. Well, that changed. Plastic instead of metal? More new ways for it to fail.

But it’s better, right? More modern. It must be better because everyone is doing it.

I mourn for March, 2004 when everything was still good. When I was hopeful. When I was whole.

Plop… my overnight bag hits the chair. Plop… my ass hits the bed. My dirty shoes resting on the clean comforter: small things don’t count when dealing with immensity.

The familiar smell of a hotel. Antiseptic masking age, skin cells in the rug, breath plastered to the walls. Nicotine, despite the no-smoking policy. The cloying sense that the previous occupants are all still here, inhabiting the space as they slide through each other’s memories like clouds adrift.

The remnants of conversations, lovemaking, joys and arguments floating about like leaves, adrift on an autumn wind. Of dead memories.

This doesn’t smell like just any hotel, though. The smell here is unique, seared into my memory like the burn from a white-hot iron. This isn’t the smell of a hotel: this is the smell of my memories. A smell that knows me more than I know it.

Her taste. Her touch.

Why am I here again?

It calls me. A ritual pulsing deep beneath my heart. I think it’s a memory, maybe, but so fleeting… like the imagined memory of a manufactured recollection of a half-remembered truth… dangling at the end of a long chain of abused thought.

Is a memory just a hallucination we’ve held so long that it develops tenure?

That first night after I watched her… pass… it took hours to get to sleep. The pain, the sorrow, the rending disappearance of half of my soul.

We had always promised each other that we would try – if we could – to visit after the final adieu.

And, I think she did.

I awakened the next day to a peace I hadn’t known since childhood. I smelled her – her, not a dusty hotel. I smelled what it was like to be with her… her musk, her perfume, her shampoo. I touched what it was to have been next to her. I tasted what it was to have kissed her. And I felt in my heart what I always had felt when we awakened, tangled in each other’s arms.

I felt a warm peace.

But I also had a fleeting recollection then: like she had been there, visited me. And I felt that she wanted me to come back here so we could do it again.

Something happened that night.

Or my mind was playing tricks on me. I didn’t know. I still don’t.

It’s 4:11: it was a long drive here and I should eat.

Yes, Anne’s Diner’s around the corner: sweet memories.

The restroom calls me to freshen up and unpack my essentials. I put them on the counter – my toothbrush, my comb, my razor.

And then I look for it: a tiny scratch on the mirror in the corner. My finger moves slowly as if it has a will of its own: I touch it, then trace it with my fingers. Still here after all these years. I did that… shortly after the remodel. I was struggling for continuity – some part of me had refused to believe that it was even the same room. I wanted to leave a mark. Something I could touch. Something permanent.

It’s still here. The scar. An imprint. Not just a scratch – my scratch.

I remember standing in this very spot in front of this mirror’s predecessor. Holding my wife from behind, looking at our image peering from the glassy surface. It was our last night together in this room – before we made the final drive. We looked like one being with two heads canted towards one another. I knew, then, what our vow meant: ‘when two shall be as one.’ It was branded on our hearts.

But this is not that same mirror. When there is too much age on my soul, will I be replaced too?

Yes, inevitably.

***

After a short walk, I go for dinner. But I had to check the address twice.

I walk in… disoriented.

Where am I? It’s so unfamiliar. Wrong.

This is supposed to be the diner where we ate together that last day before she went into the hospital. This is supposed to be my anchor… a part of my ritual. A way of reliving our truth.

But it’s been sold. Remodeled. Rethemed. At least I can remember the shape of the building, the resonance of the echoes. But this anchor is now, too, unmoored; it’s only my tenacious need that keeps the relevance alive.

We had reminisced here that day… that day I keep having to reach further and further back to pull forward. The good times, the bad, the struggles and the victories.

We planned what we would do after she got well again – we dreamed how to live.

We grasped them tenaciously, like a child with a snow globe shaking it to keep it alive. We jealously held them to us throughout her decline. We hoped they would help her get better.

“Sir? Is there something wrong with your gyoza?”

I’m startled and look at her reflexively. Composing myself, I smile into her eyes and rub the moisture out of mine. “No, it’s… good, thank you. Sorry… allergies.” I’m embarrassed.

I don’t want my malaise to interfere with anyone’s happy memory-building here. The couple over there, giggling – new love? The family here, laughing. The serious couple in the back, planning.

I smile at my server as sincerely as I can muster, “Thank you so much. Hey – do you happen to know Anita? She worked here when it was Anne’s Diner. I was kinda hoping to see her today…”

“I’m sorry: no, I don’t. I don’t think anyone from Anne’s came back to this restaurant. We’re really… different...” She smiles perkily. Young. Like the other servers.

“…A whole different theme.”

Out with the old, in with the new.

“Thanks. She was… a friend of mine.”

Anita had served my wife and me on that day before her last check-in. The two of them gossiped about TV shows like they were real. Their banter, even then, reminded me of times when all that mattered was a laugh track or dramatic music.

When I came back the next year after she passed, Anita had remembered her. “Of course I remember her! She was so full of life and… I’m so sorry…” And she remembered her every year thereafter.

Anita was a living confirmation of my memories. But now, that’s lost to me too.

After dinner, I stroll aimlessly. As I walk around, waiting to get tired, I find myself strolling past that cursed hospital. It’s changed too: a big addition. Still stern and sterile.

I stare at the new wall of windows that was a parking lot with a grassy island. Recalling my love dropping something we just had to find – but we both knew she was stalling. We weren’t looking for a trinket in the grass: we were searching for a last tiny desperate moment. Yes, somehow, she knew.

Those weeks of chemo are a blur. Going back and forth each day. Holding her hand and reassuring her as she drifted further and further away. Then, finally in late-March, hospice came and they ‘treated’ her. In truth, they took her from me even then, but her body stubbornly refused to cooperate. All I could see in her eyes after that was a jumble of fleeting, confused memories.

She didn’t know who I was anymore, only that I had mattered.

She asked for her mother, long since deceased. But I was there for her instead.

I was there… until she wasn’t there for me any longer.

***

The TV drones on in the hotel room, now dark and a bit claustrophobic. The echoes of this place closing in on me like there’s not enough room for the both of us.

I realize I’ve been humming the song Memories from the musical Cats. Stop it! When did I become a maudlin old man? I haven’t died, or even long stalled. I just come by here once a year to embrace these memories. To honor… the best part of my life.

Since then, I’ve made some of our last plans come true. I went on two of those vacations we dreamt about. Peru with a tour group. And France. Always with, well… the thought of my wife: her happy spirit.

And I started the business we wanted, the one we dreamed about together. Now, we employ unsheltered people to help build tiny homes, then donate them to a foundation that provides them to… unsheltered people. We’ve changed lives. Not all successes, but enough to count. To make a difference.

I named the community ‘Grace Gardens.’ Her middle name was Grace. And this is the garden she sowed through her grace, through her character.

Now, I turn off the TV. Sleep comes irregularly at my age. But not tonight. Tonight, I cuddle the pillows and drift with the happy hope that something beautiful will happen again.

I look around the room, wondering if this is still a vault of recollections or if it’s, instead, an emotional prison.

I don’t talk to people about this sojourn – not my therapist, not our kids, not my friends. They’d worry. They’d say I’m stuck in the past.

And, well, they’d be right – emotionally, I am stuck. Maybe this yearly ritual is just grief dressed in better clothes.

But I don’t feel stuck. I feel... faithful. That has to count for something.

As sleep overtakes me, I admit to myself: no, I haven’t moved on.

***

The fog clears and it’s like I’ve been implanted in this place, though I’ve always been here. Wherever ‘here’ is…

I now remember all the times I’ve seen her… since. But it’s always like she’s playing dress-up. Each time she arrives, she seems to be a different person. Sometimes from the past, or a strange future, or a fantasy land. That’s just like her: going all-in even at play.

But I know without a doubt who she is: only by spirit, not by mien.

She’s in the corners; she’s in the fabric of this place. Whistling birds and roaring thunder. She’s an element of nature. Untethered, unbounded, stealing through my dreams like a vision.

Then the geisha breezes in and fills my tea cup, the gossamer steam curling into the air.

Static crackles and like a drifting wind, she blows away, only to reform as a native dancer twirling around me. She’s chanting something… I don’t know the words but I know the meaning: ‘now’ is all we have left.

“Baby, is that you? What have you become?”

The images go staticky and make an unnerving feedback noise for a second. Now, she’s black-and-white and low resolution, tending bar in a campy saloon.

The saloon doors bang open behind me and when I turn, instead there are trees swaying in the wind. I’m on a grassy knoll on a cool fall morning with colorful leaves drifting to earth around me. A darling little girl, with sun kissed blonde hair in pigtails and wearing a turquoise jumper comes to me, a tear in her eye. Turquoise was my wife’s favorite color. The girl carries an unnerved cat in her arms.

“He’s broken, sir. What’s wrong? Can you help him?”

I look at the cat and know.

“He loves you.”

I pause to let that truth sink in.

“But… he’s lonely. It’s not his time to be yours forever.”

She looks at me. Slowly her understanding grows, casting her features with a grave maturity.

She nods, sadly, and sets him on the ground.

Much as I expect the pile of fur to bolt away the second he’s set free, instead he stands on the ground a moment, frozen in his thoughts. He turns to her and, slowly, ritualistically even, rubs around her legs, marking her as his, showing his appreciation. Then he turns and walks, not runs, into the woods. While he maintains an air of intent, he doesn’t look back despite how much he wants to.

Cats don’t look back. It’s not dignified.

And the melody lights in my head… the Broadway cat singing, “memories… like a…” The world changes again.

As my vision clears, I find that myself on a cold windswept mountain. In the distance, there are dragons flying, like the beasts from my wife’s favorite story. And riders upon the dragons… also like the story.

The greatest among them suddenly lands beside me. Then the sultry, leather-clad rider drops to the ground and approaches, a swagger in her step.

“You want me. And I want you.” She says it as if it’s a natural greeting. “I dream of the day…” She stoops to let her hand brush my cheek, only then to realize I’m kneeling. All I can see are her ocean-blue eyes. “The day when we can ride together again...” Our eyes mist.

The world dissolves to gray and…

I am flying above the clouds. My wings flex. Awareness dawns: I am the dragon and she rides astride my back. We are chasing something… a need? But I also know that, when we catch it, it will undo us.

But we have to go. She’s riding me, directing me. I have no choice: our bond demands it.

“My brave boy. It has been long enough. I must release you…

“You must release yourself.”

***

I sit up, startled.

It’s still dark outside. Where am I? Oh yes. The hotel.

Yes.

I wipe away the moisture in my eyes.

I’ve never awakened quite like this. Yes, like before, I taste her. I smell her. I feel her embrace.

…but… now: this is new…? I remember being ridden – her legs astride my back, like some dream-beast with a mission. Flying to a place I am afraid to go.

Wait. What?

It’s a jumble. A cat? Feelings and flashes. All I’m left with is sensation and… resolve?

The ritual isn’t working anymore.

I don’t need Anita. I don’t need a scratch in a mirror or to see the grassy island where there was a parking lot. My recollections of her are pure and true. They’re mine.

Checking the clock, I see: oh, it’s 4:11. What a lot can happen in just twelve fateful hours.

I lay back, shaking a bit, trying to calm myself to finish my sleep. Recounting memories, there was the time when a commotion happened behind me in Paris, while I was standing on the platform of the Eiffel Tower. A young man had just proposed, people are cheering and taking pictures. At that moment, my wife was with me – but inside – she was like a ghost of a memory, but real, palpable. We’re both reliving our moment, our proposal. It’s a full-circle déjà vu for me.

It’s still too early to awaken.

I practice my meditative breathing until again I am asleep.

***

And I return to the land of the living. The morning sun paints hopeful shapes of fluttering light on the wall opposite the window. Reflections, a little prismatic from some flaw in the glass. They’re like memories – not quite right, but made more beautiful for their imperfection. Wabi Sabi.

The bed is beneath me. Still lumpy, but I feel lighter.

What happened last night? Why do I feel rested but not exhilarated like all the other years?

Was I awake, earlier, thinking that I had finished this pilgrimage?

This doesn’t serve me anymore. This plane is for the living.

Yes, I will join her where she is, soon enough.

But not today.

A strange vision comes to me… I’m small, wordless and furry, slipping between her legs, rubbing against her shins. The gesture feels like love… but it also feels like goodbye.

The room is still.

For a moment when I awakened, I had thought I smelled a trace of her – but no.

She’s not in the walls. She’s not in the shadows. She doesn’t flit about me like snowflakes. Not anymore.

It’s just a room… A simple, peaceful respite for weary travelers.

Clean and a little too cold at that.

It’s like the morning after a party: the celebration is a memory. You walk downstairs and look at the mess, starting to move on to yet another day.

My ritual is complete.

It’s time.