The Memory Collectors

by Dete Meserve

I had no idea back then that once you love something—anything—all you can ever be sure is that you’re going to lose it someday.

Now I’m lying inside a ginormous machine Aeon Expeditions has named the Sam 5000 that looks like an MRI on steroids married a cement mill.

Because of what my boss said, I’m thinking about guinea pigs. Specifically, the guinea pig I had when I was eight. Rocko took a big risk, busted out of his cage, got trapped in the toilet, and died. Hope that isn’t my fate here.

Everything lies. Except the eyes. Didn’t Van Gogh—or maybe it was Tupac—say that?

off. I wasn’t training for a healthier lifestyle. Or for some big marathon or trek. I was training to rid myself of the demons that had control of my life.

I remember sitting outside the Ventura County Hall of Justice after the verdict and staring up at the golden letters on the glass that read “Hall of Justice” and thinking: That’s a blatant lie.

“Everything in my life is better when I’m with her.”

We do crazy things when we’re afraid. Don’t I know it.

There’s a fine line between genius and madness, and you can’t ride that sharp edge if you’re a talker.

“Sometimes the shit that looks hard is actually the easiest.

We think all we are is what we see on the surface. But there’s always more.

Scaling a mountain is easy compared to figuring out how to navigate a relationship. Or a flirtation.

“This is a song about Orpheus,” she says softly. “He’s deeply in love with Eurydice, and when she dies, he can’t stop thinking about her. He can’t figure out how he’ll live without her. He’s so desperate that he travels to the underworld and sings this melody to Hades, the god of the underworld, to plead with him to let him take Eurydice back with him.”

All it really takes to be happy sometimes is being with the one person who really gets you.

“All good things begin with a maybe”

The world changes between heartbeats.

“I love you.” When your heart is breaking, what else is there to say?

“It’s not what you look at that matters,” he’d said. “It’s what you see.”

When we arrive home, the place is the same, yet different—like a memory that’s faded at the edges.

We all think we know what other people should do. But I see now that each of us is going on roads only we can see.”

“Everything we do, everything that happens to us—good or bad—relies on a million little moments in the past. We fool ourselves if we believe that we control every moment. But we can do something now to change our futures,”

In the quiet moments, your presence lingers, A gentle breeze soothing my tired spirit, In my dreams, you appear, a fleeting vision, A specter dancing on the edges of my thoughts. Left to wander in the shadows of your absence, I seek hope, finding light only in the memories of you.

Sometimes fate steps in to steal things from you. And sometimes it sweeps in to take you places you only dreamed of going.

We’re on the deck facing the ocean in the same chairs we sat in when we were married. Perhaps it’s muscle memory, but he’s sitting on the right and I’m on the left. Like we always did.