When Memory Lane is a Whiteout

I was on the road home when the blizzard hit. I had dropped acid in Denver at the dorm. By Pueblo I couldn’t see a thing. It was a total whiteout. The road, the plains, the sky, there was no difference. Yet everything was glowing there was so much light. I thought I was dying and was on my way somewhere else than Texas. I persevered though and made it to Austin where I picked up my high school friend Louie. I had Louie drive. All that way and nothing had happened. I felt blessed. I put my feet up on the dash and went to sleep. I woke up upside down. Louie said we were run off the road. We were alive but the truck was crushed like a can. I walked to a store up the road to phone my mother and tell her the miraculous news that I was still alive.

She was furious. I didn’t hear the voice of love. It was a foreign language to me then.

That was half a century ago and in another country. A particular hook brought it back up out of the mostly fished-out pond of my memory. After another life-threatening experience a few days ago, a friend scolded me. I’m fluent in love now so love was all I heard. I didn’t even think of that ancient incident involving the words of my mother. But then I found myself in the bathroom staring at the wall, as one must if one is a man and chooses to pee standing up. And there had been a sale and I had stocked up on toilet paper and I was staring at the stacked rolls when it all came flooding back. And I remembered my mother. And I felt her absence. And I thought how we all face a whiteout when we die, how all these memories building up the idea of a self are wiped. So that who we were becomes like a tissue on the water in the hearts of those who knew us. It might float for a while. Or it might get flushed right away. Merrily, merrily …

10 December 2024
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca