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I Live Through Memories

by Riem Derbas

I remember her voice so loud and clear as though she were here beside me now. So soft and melodic like a morning bird’s song it rang through my ears like clockwork every morning, luring me out of my slumber to start with her the new day. It lulled me to sleep every night and woke me up every morning. It spoke to me words I would forever cherish and shared with me a life long past and a future yet to come. It was my own entertainment device, enthralling me with tales of her childhood and enchanting me with secrets she did not mind sharing. It was her voice, her musical voice that had the ability to send shivers up my spine and lazy smiles across my face.

I remember her lips, so full and luscious and supple, they were tantalising, rosy pink, and so inviting. I was always drawn to them. When she spoke, her lips so animated, they beckoned me to take them, but her voice was a tool against my desire, captivating me and drawing my attention away from the want of the lips, to the want of the words she was speaking. She had the habit of pulling her bottom lip in to her mouth and gently scraping her teeth over it before letting it slide out slowly. It was then they’d come crashing down on my own, completely catching me off guard every single time.

I remember her scent, a soft and subtle sweetness of her perfume mingled so well with the mellow of her natural fragrance to create something that was her. It wafted through the house, alerted me to her presence and created for me a hidden path to her whereabouts.

I remember her eyes, so bright and full of life they were hypnotising, those chocolate orbs of hers. They had the ability to reach deep within a person and pull from them their most guarded secrets, the ones they never dreamed of sharing. They were large, almond shaped, breathtakingly beautiful. I would sometime find myself just lost deep into those magnificent eyes of hers, and then there’d be no stopping the revelations, for though her eyes were always masking the window to her soul, for me, no such front existed.

I remember her hair, the changing, shifting, morphing, moulding form she always made it. Naturally, it was dark and straight, dead straight, but she always complained it was so simple, too plain and boring, bland and bleah. So often as the seasons changed through the year, so too did her hair change. It went from black to brown to blonde to red; from long to short, short to long; from curly to straight to wavy to perm to braids to bald, so long as it changed, she was happy.

I used to joke that she had mood hair. When she was angry for a long period of time she’d chop it all off and dye it a blazing red; if her mood subsided slightly, she’d run streaks through it to break out the anger; if she felt lively, a kaleidoscope of colour lived atop her head; and when she needed to be taken seriously, for job interviews, her hair was much less extravagant; back to subtle but not boring.

Her nose, as cute as a button, had a light sprinkling of freckles that she would always try to conceal, covering the very tip. It wasn’t pointed, her nose, it was perfectly rounded and perfectly proportionate. But of course, she despised it, complained it was far too big for her face and not the perfect nose I thought it to be. She wanted to get it fixed, but I forbade her to do so, made her promise she wouldn’t touch it, and she left it for me, a sign of how deep our love went.

I remember her ever lasting legs that rounded slightly at the thighs for her womanly curves. They were the legs of the dancer she had once been, and they, so long and slender, carried her with such elegance and grace, pulled her through life on a constant road of confidence. They were scarred. And of course, she hated those imperfections; but to me they were simple bookmarks in the story.

There was that jagged scar on her right knee, a lifetime reminder of an age so long ago when her youthful ignorance had her climbing over the railing of the second storey of her home to fetch the dolly she had dropped.

I remember the small things she’d do, usually forgotten to the larger scale memories. But I remember these things about her in as much detail as everything else I know to be hers:

The way her mornings were always greeted with a soft sigh of content, then my mornings would be greeted by that harmonious voice as she told me she loved me, those luscious lips she’d bring down to my own to brush gentle morning kisses against. And how my day farewelled in much the same manner as we’d snuggle close together, confessing our love for one another.

The small quiver of her lips when she was upset; the way she’d suck on her top lip when lost in thought and bite the bottom when trying to hide a surprise. The way her face contorted in anger when she watched the news, here forehead would wrinkle, her nose crinkle and her nostrils visibly flare; the way her cheeks flushed bright red when she walked into the room in a flurry; and the instant smile that forged itself on her face when she’d greet me.

The way her teeth were brushed in a circular motion: always eight rotations clockwise, then eight rotations anticlockwise; the way her fringe was pulled back but with a few stubborn strands that refused to stay put, falling loosely to sit on her forehead.

I remember the way the salt shaker was always on the left of the pepper; and the babushka jars that sat in the corner of the kitchen were always in the same order: Sugar, flour, salt, coffee, tea.

I remember how, in the study, the black pen holder that sat in the right corner of her desk was always filled with three black pens, two red pens, and half a dozen blue ones; no more, no less; the photographs on her desk and around the room were organised in chronological order; the phone book placed religiously by the phone; and the top drawer locked, hiding patient files and other important documents the world was not privy to see.

How she could never get any work done if her feet weren’t snuggled in the blue and purple slippers I had bought her one winter; and how she always hung her coat on the far left hook, never in the middle, never on the right. I had asked her one day why and she told me it was suspicious, for what, she couldn’t remember, but her mother had always told her to hang it on the left.

I remember her humming herself to sleep to a melody her mother used to sing to her, her mouth so close to my ear I could feel the warmth of her tickling breath on my neck. The way her fingers twisted and twirled through her hair when it was long enough, a signal of deep thought and thinking while pondered over the files for work; and how she’d tilt her head slightly to the right when caught in an intense conversation or captivated by something else entirely.

I remember how she always carried with her a few extra hair ties and a bunch of bobby pins, just in case; how her morning coffees were preceded only by a glass of cold water, needing to sip the cool liquid before the hot coffee entered her system. How she loved the word jaunty because it just sounded so ridiculous and made her feel jaunty; she’d chuckle every time she told someone new her reasons for the love of that word, and I would chuckle soundlessly beside her.

I remember her in that time as vivid as though we were back there, the memories a cherished bubble in my mind as I try to create new memories with her, the old ones fading in the mist of the Alzheimer’s that claimed her a year ago. I remember enough of the old life to survive us both and I often take her on a little journey back through our lives, hoping that she remembers how we lived and laughed and loved in the life we created together.

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