Forgotten

The sun felt good. It was chilly inside; the air conditioning had been running for ages already and the building never warmed up once it was on. But outside, in the garden, the flowers were blooming and the sun felt good.

     One flower caught Gina’s eye. She wheeled over and admired it for a moment. She’d heard that if you love a flower, if you think it is just the prettiest one you have ever seen, you would leave it where it grew.

     Gina picked the flower from the bush without even hesitating. She was in her 90s already. There wasn't time left for that sort of sentiment, it wouldn't be practical. There was a lot in her life she wasn’t sure about anymore, but she knew that she could be gone anytime now.

     One of those things she was unsure about was how long she’d been living in this place, this retirement community her children picked out. It's a nursing home, even if they had tried to not call it that. But even so, it had been nice enough at first, she’d enjoyed being with people her own age again, but that felt like a long time ago. People were nice, the other ones who lived there and the ones who worked there, but the place lost its shine as time passed.

     She remembered her kids would visit every weekend, until they didn’t. She remembered sometimes they would bring their own children, but that stopped too. Gina held her face upward, willing the sun to clear the fog blocking the faces of her grandchildren. She almost had it. She could almost see them. A door slammed, and she lost them. Only vague memories danced around in her head now, hazy and blurred.

     The nurse who had come outside noticed the tears on Gina’s cheeks and asked if she was alright. Gina lied, she lied a lot about things lately, but she couldn't remember how much was deliberate. Today, this lie was deliberate. She told the nurse the sun got in her eyes, she just needed to get to the shade. After pushing Gina over to a shaded table, the nurse was gone again just as quickly as she'd showed up. Oblivious to what she'd done.

     Gina tried to remember again, but it was harder when she got frustrated like this. She knew she had two grandsons and a granddaughter, but their names and ages eluded her. She knew she had three grown children too. All boys. She remembered everyone told her how lucky she was to have boys. Boys loved their mothers, they took care of their mothers. And yet there she was, another day lost, unable to remember the last time she saw them. Their names were gone, too. Sometimes, she wondered if she made them all up, whether her grip on reality was totally gone.

     But Gina remembered her husband Mark. She was sure she remembered him and he had been real. She couldn’t remember what he looked like when he was old, maybe she didn't know him when he was old. That part she couldn't remember, when it was that she lost him. In her mind, when she was able to picture him, he was young. Always young, the way he was when they met. When they fell in love. It was all so long ago now, it barely felt like the same lifetime, but she remembered the look in his eye when he asked her to marry him, the look on his face when she said yes.

     His voice was gone, though. She couldn’t hear him ask anymore. She was losing a little more of him every day, having more and more trouble picturing him in her mind or remembering his name. Having parts of him hurt, and Gina wished it was all or nothing. Either she had him or he was gone. This halfway nonsense was getting to be too painful.

     Teardrops hit the table and she dabbed her face with the tissue she keeps in her sleeve, looking around, checking for anyone that might be watching. No one else was taking advantage of the weather today, so she was alone.

     She held the flower up and sniffed, closing her eyes and letting its scent take her away. For a moment, it blocked out the pain created by the holes in her memory. Blocked out the medicinal smell that clung to her clothes and followed her around. That flower let her be Gina. She was able to let go of everything that hurt, even if for that moment. She just knew that it was a warm, sunny day and she had a flower.

     But the moment passed, and she was back to thinking about how much she had lost. She remembered just enough to know there was a lot that had faded away, always just enough to know that there was so much missing. Maybe that was why she didn’t get many visits from her boys and their children. If she couldn’t remember them, why should they remember her? Who would want to see an old lady that might not even recognize her own children? Was it even fair of her to hope they would come anyway?

     But she did have three boys. And boys were supposed to take care of their mothers, they were supposed to love their mothers. If they loved their mother, they were supposed to visit their mother. She stared at the flower and wondered if that were true. Did her boys love her? Did they try to take care of her? Did they love her enough to visit her? She couldn’t remember, she hated that she couldn't remember. There was no way know the right answer when all the details were gone. So, instead of being angry and sad, instead of being scared, she decided to let the flower show her the answer to the important question.

     Gina pulled one petal, then another, and another, while she waited for the boys who may never show up, “They love me, they love me not, they love me…”