Memory/But I Didn't Have Time

One day my sister, Tomaca, emailed the following story to me saying I needed to respond to a comment. After reading the story I emailed her back saying I didn’t write it. She replied that I wrote the story and need to acknowledge the comment. So I read the story a couple more times. As I read I began to recognize the rhythm and remember the true events that led me to write the story. A Traumatic Brian Injury can damage your memory as it has mine. I can forget what is said right after I hear it. Sometimes I forget what a conversation is about right in the middle of it. Here’s the story. I believe my memory and writing skills will return to me. But I Didn’t Have Time A SHORT STORY She wanted to tell me about her grandfather, a fine dark brown skinned man, a major figure in history with so much memory collected in his house, the family home now becoming a museum in honor of him, to document and display his place in American history. She wanted to tell me, but I didn’t have the time. I had to get back to work to papers piled high on my desk, to phone calls that needed to be made, and to emails that needed to be read and answered. I had to get back to the ringing phone and constant interruptions giving me more important work to pile on my desk into a dizzying mess. She wanted to tell me about her brother who, as a child, dreamed of being a concert pianist, which he did, traveling the world over to make the piano flow with such beauty tears welled in eyes. He taught college students to make piano keys dance beneath their fingers as they looked into his approving smile. She wanted to tell me, but I didn’t have the time.I had to grab groceries and stop by the cleaners to pick up my now clean clothes and drive home to cook dinner, then to write papers that needed to be written for the next day, water the roses and to nod off in front of the TV playing some meaningless nonsense and then to bed because tomorrow would be busy again. She wanted to tell me about her brother-in-law, dressed all in blue, always all in blue wearing a sparkling butterfly pin. His Ph.D. from Harvard came as a surprise to those who saw him draw deep into himself to tell stories to people lost for a time until the tales end, when he becomes himself again all dressed in blue with a butterfly pin. She wanted to tell me but I didn’t have the time. I saw her in the drugstore and ducked so she wouldn’t see me with her bright smile ready to talk as if she had all day which maybe she did but I didn’t. And then I would have to walk slowly beside her as she moved with her cane. I needed to get home to feed my dogs and change clothes to be on time for a dinner with people I pretended to know and pretended to like. She wanted to tell me about her sister who traveled world wide with her blue wearing husband, about her working as an archivist in the Harvard Library, knowing the feel of crumbling ancient papers and books neatly stored in cool shadowed rooms. She wanted to tell me, but I didn’t have the time. She seemed to appear everywhere I went, inviting me into her stories, but with work and writing and caring for a house and a yard, surely she would understand that I have to get to the cleaners before they closed. Next time I see her, I will stop to talk but my ride is waiting to get my car from the shop to run to the mall for something I wrote down to remember but lost the paper. Awaking from the sound of crushing metal and shattering glass, screams and cries piercing through the night’s stillness like a streak of lightening. She sat in her seat belt, head fallen to one side, her mind floating above her attached to nothing and no one, no breath, no heartbeat, no stories of history or of the present, no stories laced in blue with a butterfly pin, and no stories of the musty smell of yellowed papers. She wanted to tell me about scholars and poets she had met during her life, many names and rainbow faces, published works, oral histories, library shelves all bringing the brightness of knowledge and dancing, lost now in the scattered glass of darkness, all because I didn’t have time. I sit beneath a tree near where the wreck happened and stare ahead with the sun warming my face. My body relaxes as cars hurry by and I imagine her laughing eyes. Now I have time.