How to Forget

Don’t do it. Fight against it with everything you have. Cling desperately to the frailest threads of your memory. They are probably all that you have left.

    Write grocery lists and set reminders. If those don’t work, write the lists on your skin. Preferably in black sharpie; the kind that won’t fade for weeks. You’ll feel good when you get to the store with your foolproof tattoos. Eggs, pork chops, Cap’n Crunch. It’s all written right there for you to see, for you to touch. A few days later when you’re searing your pork you’ll remember you forgot the lemon salt and curse.

    When your mother asks you to change the lightbulb in the garage, nod and say you will. Tell yourself that you’ll remember this time. Map out in your head exactly how you’ll change it. You’ll grab a bulb from the basement and a ladder from the storage room and head to the garage stepping through boxes of dusty books to reach the light. You’ll change the bulb, close the door and throw out the old, burnt-out filaments. You can picture it clearly. It’s a good plan. Then get something to eat. Start your homework. Get bored. Take a nap. Don’t bother getting out of bed until your mom gets home. She’ll ask if you remembered to change the bulb. Of course you didn’t.

    Make up a game to remember names. It has something to do with mnemonic devices. It doesn’t matter because it won’t work. You still won’t be able to remember the name of that aunt from Indianapolis who bought you that bracelet that you forgot to send a thank you note for.

    Save your father’s voicemails. Play them over and over no matter how much they make you cry. Dwell on the way his voice breaks and rasps. Close your eyes when he says ‘hey Mani girl’ and pretend that he’s speaking to you now, from the foot of your bed. Listen to him ask what time to pick you up from volleyball practice so many times that even in complete silence you can hear perfectly the echoes of his voice. ‘Call me back. Love you.’ ‘Call me back. Love you.’ ‘Call me back. Love you.’ Cry when you forget your phone in a department store on the shelf with the fake silk scarves. People will tell you that you are being overdramatic. It’s just a phone, they will say. Don’t tell them that you can never get the voicemails back. Soon you will begin to forget the sound of his laugh. It will take you long minutes of concentration to remember the exact deepness of tone in his voice. The one voicemail you can still remember will play in your head like a scratched CD in a car radio that you can barely hear over the frustrating noise of the engine. Once in awhile you will catch a word or a phrase so indistinctly that you will not be able to help wondering if you made it up in your head.

    Keep his old brown suede jacket in the back of your closet. Bury your face in it every day for the first few months. It will still smell like the spicy Egyptian Musk he always wore. Fall asleep with your hands near your face so that you might inhale whatever of his scent stuck to your fingers. Over time you should pretend like you don’t notice the way you must breathe deeper to catch a fading whiff. It will make you less sad if you pretend. Still one day you will reach for his sleeve and smell nothing but the detergent that will have rubbed off from your sweaters. Then go to a street fair. Buy a tiny bottle of oil labeled Egyptian Musk. It won’t smell the same. But you won’t be able to pinpoint the difference. Your dad smelled sweeter, or perhaps it was muskier. Either way, put the bottle on your cluttered dresser and hope that you will lose that eventually too.

    Buy a corkboard. And thumbtacks. Hang up every picture of him you can find. Fill yourself with these smiling saturated photos in an attempt to crowd out image of the cold corpse you most vividly remember. This way, you are sure you will never forget his face. And you won’t. You will be able to close your eyes and picture him. It’s just that all the edges will be a little blurry.

    You will feel worst about forgetting his birthday. Or father’s day. Or the anniversary of his death. You will be in the middle of a song, halfway home on a bus ride when you remember that you should’ve remembered that today was the 9th. Maybe you will attribute this to early onset dementia. But more likely you’ll think you’re just a shitty person. Don’t admit this to anyone. When your best friend asks how you are holding up, pretend like you didn’t just realize that something was supposed to be wrong. Tell yourself that it’s natural to forget these things after a few years. Convince yourself that your mind is a muddy rock face, down which almost everything slips slowly and surely.

    If you can hold onto anything, let it be the memory you have of the morning he woke you up singing loudly to the pop song of your favorite boy band. Remember the colors he wore and the awkward way his long limbs contorted to the music. It is nothing, but hold on to it. Even if you cannot remember what his voice sounded like when he sang, hold on to the vague warmth of that memory. Let the edges blur and the smells fade but cling to the emotions. If that is the only thing you remember, than you have done well.