A Random Moment in the Midst of COVID-19
The challenges associated with my ability to remember events, moments, and words with accuracy is quite real. I wonder in ten years, what will this mean for me when I transition into my mid-50s where there is the likelihood of early dementia developing. I hear there is a relationship between brain injury early in life and the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s in later life.
I have had my share of head injuries — most inflicted by human hands and a few by accidents. I remember when my mother slammed my head so hard against the wall that it left a permanent hole. As a child, the hole remained for awhile in the off-white paint that decorated our walls in the black and white house. I remember an attempt to jump rope at the age of 5 or 6 led to me tripping myself on the cord and falling headfirst into the concrete sidewalk. I remember, at the age of 10 or 11 maybe, my mother accusing me of stealing her laundromat money and deciding to jump on me, banging my head into the wooden floor. I remember the car accident at 13, the slight turn of my head and then blackness. Later, I woke up and I was in a hospital bed, bandages wrapped here and there, my leg propped on some harness.
There is a deep fear of losing critical parts of my memory, and then there is an acknowledgment that I do not have the best short-term memory.
On the morning of our 1991 New Year’s Day, I remember the phone call and my grandmother screaming and yelling, “no, no, Jackie.” I want to believe that I was in the room adjacent to her or in the bathroom, and I remember running into her room. I knew it without her saying much; I saw the ache in her face and a denial. It was my mother, my two little sisters who were no longer with us.
I remember, a stumble or falling onto the floor because I could not accept it. I never had the chance to tell my younger sisters that I was sorry for bullying them. I would never get to tell my mother that I forgive her for those times that she banged my head against the wall, the floor. I would never get closure on our past so that we could build a future — one where we could talk share our memories of being a Black woman, a Black mother, and a wife.
Since then, my memory has been one of just flashes or glimpses of my life moving too fast. Each day, every year was drawing me further and further away from her memory. Time was pulling me further away from those memories that were also about her goodness.
Moving so fast through life prevents you from savoring each experience, from being able to rest because you are so compelled to move towards something. It also prevents you from tasting and feeling every part of the moment and, thus, your ability to recall and remember something with accuracy diminished.
The story goes that the night my mother past, she wrote about her incoming death in a letter. Something was telling her to hold still, but she refused to listen. She packed my younger siblings and herself into that 1981 Datsun car. She decided to leave from Tulsa, Oklahoma sometime between 10 and 11 o’clock that night of New Year’s Eve. She was on her way to some Muslim conference in Illinois and had promised she would attend. She was tired that night, but she was determined to get there despite her hesitancy. She pulled out that night and got onto interstate highway-44. The story goes that my mother fell asleep at the wheel, the car swerved to the right, over the median, and slammed into a truck — a truck that dragged her vehicle further down the interstate. The accident report indicated her skull was severely fractured — her memory gone.
Memory has gone.
I do not remember much of anyone ever telling us the complete story of my mother’s accident and passing. I had to call my siblings to remember, and, of course, they said, “don’t you remember, we saw this stuff before.” The only reason I have this degree of detail is from an accident report and death record I received more than three decades later. Now, I am trying to reconstruct my mother’s memory again in my mind, grieve a bit, and move quickly through the feeling.
I will probably not remember much of this day 10 years from now. And, maybe the lesson in all of this is, despite my previous head injuries, that I need to slow down. I need to experience each moment in its fullest — so that 10 years from now, I will remember my life. Instead of rushing and moving through it too quickly and with COVID-19 forcing us to pause to stay still, I can be able take a deep breath, grieve a bit, walk through my emotions longer, and rest at the moment longer.
