The Astonishing Color of After

by Emily X.R. Pan

If only I could rewind, go back in time and ask my mother every question about every tiny thing. How crucial those little fragments are now; how great their absence. I should have saved them up, gathered them like drops of water in a desert. I’d always counted on having an oasis.

Isn’t part of being a parent that you’re supposed to believe your daughter when no one else does? When she needs your belief more than she’s ever needed anything from you?

“We’re not lost,” Axel said finally. “We’re just headed somewhere different.”

We try so hard to make these little time capsules. Memories strung up just so, like holiday lights, casting the perfect glow in the perfect tones. But that picking and choosing what to look at, what to put on display—that’s not the true nature of remembering. Memory is a mean thing, slicing at you from the harshest angles, dipping your consciousness into the wrong colors again and again.

I couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to be known and remembered.

Here, in two dimensions, they looked so happy. But then, didn’t everyone, in pictures? That was almost the point, wasn’t it? To be able to look back and see yourself smiling, even if the camera had shuttered and clicked while you were standing there thinking about all the things that were wrong?

“I know emotions are all internal and whatnot. But I just wonder if it’s visible on the outside. You can tell when people are falling in love. So there must be a way to see if people are falling out of love, right?”

Here still didn’t mean he was actually present.

“It’s okay to be afraid. But not okay if be afraid means you do nothing. You must not do nothing. That’s not life worth living.”

it’s an incredible blessing to be able to see your loved ones during the most difficult times.”

‘Once you figure out what matters, you’ll figure out how to be brave.’

What is memory? It’s not something you can physically hold, or see, or smell, or taste. It’s just nerve impulses jumping between neurons. Sometimes it’s a matter of choice. Other times it’s self-preservation, or protection.

Memories that tell a story, if you look hard enough. Because the purpose of memory, I would argue, is to remind us how to live.