Remembering Her for Her

I think people are like memories-and memories are like people. Like memories, the people we come to know exist in front of us and become fragments of the parts they give, sometimes without realizing it. If you're lucky, the good ones stay the longest and you can rewind the film you make in your head of their face without wearing it down. And like people, memories play out before us until, for the unlucky, the film snaps off the reel and everything we knew fades into unfamiliarity, even the sound of our names.

It hurts that l was too young to remember one of the babysitters I had when I was little. Geneva had a calm, quiet presence even before Alzheimer's moved in, taking the rest of her language, reducing her to utterances of sound, if any at all. I didn't mind it though, flipping through the red zip-up book of mine she loved so much. You could change the hands of a clock and Velcro shapes to their matching source. I'd go through each activity and she'd light up like it was new every time. And she'd smile the most when she'd point to the book and I'd say "Red", like hearing her favorite color said aloud gave her a sense of what the color meant to her even through the shell of what remained of her being. I wish I could remember her for us better and not what was left.