memory. noun. the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information; the mind regarded as a store of things remembered; something remembered from the past.

a nurse, at dawn. you change out of your pyjamas into a surgical gown. white or blue or maybe yellow with little printed flowers, like your nanna’s pillowcases, soft from being washed and washed and washed again, split up the back and tied loosely at the neck. a group of you. together you walk in a wordless huddle from one end of the hospital to the other. outside, sun filters through a cloudless sky, a thin crust of overnight frost already melting on the grass. there’s a park nearby, thirty hectares of heritage roses, the bushes trimmed for spring, petals veined and cramped like a tightly balled fist inside each bud. tender and pale as an earlobe, perfect and new.

name. noun. a word or set of words by which a person or thing is known, addressed or referred to. verb. to give a name to, specify.

your name: crossed off a list. biro against clipboard. the room is already full, men and women and children hunched in recliners, glancing at empty wrists for the time, watches missing, probably tucked into a shoe, stowed in a bag or locker somewhere. you wonder why they’re here, who’s having a colonoscopy, who’s getting their tonsils removed. you look like them, enough: young-ish. fidgety. you could be having your wisdom teeth extracted; a biopsy of some kind. you wait, a blanket in your lap, while sock-footed people come and go, coughing occasionally over the muffled banter of a tv show.

come on down! a game-show host finally beckons. someone calls your name. again. you follow them into another room: medical equipment on every side, comically large like the set of a hospital soapie. tippy-toe up onto the bed. your thighs stick to the plastic-coated mattress. the doctor turns to greet you, takeaway coffee in hand, a shaving-cut coagulating on one cheek. good morning. how are you? a crumpled cup. adhesive dots on your temples, one on each side. another below your clavicle, just above your heart. a pressure that lingers even after he turns away, fiddles with dials on a machine, writes into your chart. you lie back against the pillow, lozenges of ceiling-light filling your eyes, a dozen burning suns against a plasterboard sky. left arm crooked for the anaesthetist. a waft of powdered latex, a whirring noise that intensifies. little scratch, he says cheerfully, pressing a cannula into your vein. then you disappear.

remember. verb. have in or be able to bring to one’s mind an awareness of (someone or something from the past).

there and then gone again. you remember: a plastic-capped thermometer in your ear, blood-pressure cuff on your arm. it tightens. you feel your pulse thumping painfully against the velcro straps, protest thickening in your mouth. unsaid. a child cries as their trolley-bed is wheeled into the recovery room. water in a paper cup. sandwiches cut into little triangles. pen light in your eyes. someone pushes you back to your hospital room in a wheelchair, the same hallways you walked earlier, everyone else gone. the world outside now thrums with mid-morning traffic. but you are alone, the hospital room desolate, lifeless as a smile starting to fade.

in the shower. gummy residue beneath your fingernails as you lather shampoo into your scalp. the water is too hot, runs too fast. there’s a faint smell of chlorine, an adhesive dot still stuck below your collarbone, nub in the middle, like the pistil of a metal bloom. you peel it back. your skin is rosy, a little raw. sitting on your bed in a damp towel, you push your knuckles into the fleshy muscles of your jaw, now tender as a bruise you’d like to hide. shadows shift on the colourless walls, lengthening in the midday and then the afternoon sun.

word. noun. a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence. verb. express (something spoken or written) in particular words.

your dad. at the door before dinner arrives on its green plastic tray. he brings the newspaper, always does, a biro in his shirt pocket. you complete the crossword together. it’s the only page of the local paper worth reading, you like to joke, spreading its pages across the overbed table.

you remember: your dad’s restless knees and mud-scabbed work boots, the predictable slant of his capital letters, the thrill of summoning a word before he gets there first, repeating clues out loud, wondering if it’s a noun or a verb. every day, just like this. the nurse copies the petal puzzle onto a whiteboard in the common room. nine letters, arranged as a flower, that can form a word. sometimes you recognise it instantly, the letters shifting into place upon first glance. other days, it never comes. you search for answers in the next morning’s paper. of course! it seems so obvious now: orthodoxy. technique. something.

names: zoloft. lyrica. cipramil. avanza. neulactil. quetiapine. cymbalta. because. because of it. depression. major depression. dysthymia. melancholia. intractable. medication-resistant. they’re called clamshells, those little plastic cavities. yet they never yield a pearl.

promise. noun. a declaration or assurance that one will do something or that a particular thing will happen. the quality of potential excellence. verb. give good grounds for expecting (a particular occurrence).

the glossy folds of a brochure, blue and green: this is an established and effective medical treatment for severe psychiatric conditions. passing an electrical current through the brain to induce a seizure can alleviate distressing symptoms and restore an individual to optimal health where other interventions have failed. failed. failure.

three months. you return to the waiting room at dawn. pick at the folds of your hospital gown. chat amicably with the anaesthetist when your name is called. ask him why you can taste the propofol in the back of your throat the moment it hits your bloodstream. before the world collapses into nothing. each time. being sucked beneath the pull of a deep, shadowy rift. completely dark, completely silent. surfacing again. instead of blinking salt water out of your eyes, you wake to the squeak of a wardsman’s shoes, the scent of white-bread sandwiches and orange juice. the little single servings that come packaged in a corrugated plastic cup with a peel-off lid, like an aeroplane meal.

names, the only names anyone seems to know: sylvia plath. the bell jar. esther greenwood. biting down. the summer they electrocuted the rosenbergs. the hot streets, she writes, wavering in the sun, car tops sizzling and glittering.

oh, it’s like one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, other people say. their eyes light up. in recognition. with pity. it’s not, you reply. it feels like nothing.

forget. verb. failure to remember. deliberately cease to think of.

some part of you has been wiped clean, no way of knowing except for those halting lapses in conversation, the furrowed brow of a friend or relative, the occasional shock of a photograph or email completely severed from any sense of personal connection or recollection.

gone. empty. sort of.

forgetting: it advances like a cold front. this thing. a skulking, haphazard sort of amnesia, no rhyme or reason to what persists, what stays whole, and what snaps off like home-bleached hair. i have a terrible memory, you explain, or apologise, when something familiar slips past, cold and slick as an eel’s ripple. names. faces. your sister’s special birthday party. impossible to grasp. puzzled expressions. a flush of embarrassment. but then. oh, don’t worry. so do i, somebody inevitably replies. can barely remember what I did yesterday. you both smile. the moment passes.

words: retrograde and antegrade memory loss. apathy. confusion. rare and unusual. sorry. what’s your name again?

the first time. before it. do you remember? your brother was there. small talk about the weather, the kids, his IT job you’ve never quite understood. your niece, just a toddler, draws a special portrait of you in orange felt pen, your limbs extending like stalks from a triangular body, a little wobbly head floating somewhere above, out on its own. like a balloon. like you’ve become unstuck. just like before. like afterwards.

forget, try to forget: the hospital car park. empty. your head resting on the steering wheel in the chalky evening light. we’ve tried everything. you repeat the words to yourself, again and again, can still hear the doctor’s sigh, see him leaning back in his chair, hands held askew in lieu of justification, something sacrificial in the tilt of his palms, the particular angle of his fingers. silence. electric. i am not better. the words don’t come. i am not better. i am different. diluted. i am changed, unchanged. but perhaps there are no words for this. no control experiment for your life, your body, no way of knowing what you could or should have been. only now. a self somehow removed from another self, a faltering sense of loss you cannot place and cannot prove. the car park. empty. you. empty. you turn the key in the ignition and drive away.

reminder. noun. a thing that causes someone to remember something.

even now. years later. a barista calls your name. cappuccino in a takeaway cup. crossword clues in the morning paper. recall. recollection. six letters. shaving cuts. the sensation of thumbs, firm, dots on your temples, a dot above your heart. always. limp sandwiches from the corner store. white bread. biro in a shirt pocket. i have a terrible memory, sorry. what’s your name again? notes on scraps of paper. words on paper. fine print.

and yet. something lingers, a glimmer you can preserve, cultivate. you remember your grandfather tending his roses in the middle of a drought, coaxed them from crumbling soil with water saved from a bucket in the shower. you learnt all of their names. candy stripe. double delight. buff beauty. mr lincoln. he clipped the freshest, waxiest blooms from the bushes for you, never saved or hoarded them, and your nanna wrapped them in damp newspaper so they stayed supple and fresh on the long drive home.

there are other memories, like this. sharp. indelible. yours. come look at your baby sister, new and milky sweet, flecks of winter sunshine quivering on the carpet beneath your mother’s bare feet. the fabric store when she still made all your clothes, bolts of silk and cotton filling the aisles, the inimitable scrape of a dressmaker’s scissors cutting neat rectangles on the shop counter. the lounge-room drawer crammed with old cassettes, or lowering the needle onto a simon & garfunkel record, careful, careful, the hissing and outer-space crackles before a guitar riff breaks the noisy silence. hiding in the branches of the cassia tree, the guava, the white frangipani in the backyard, its branches as pliant as a limb, hiding, running away, that’ll show them, nobody even noticing you’re gone. united airlines flight 175 plunging into the southern façade of the south tower in new york, the way it plays over and over and over on your tv screen one day in september, your last year of high school, the skyscraper bent double like a kid punched in the guts. all the days your dogs died. the way your dad lay in bed when he got bad news, staring past the ceiling fan, sweeping a hand across his eyes. your first kiss, standing in the rain, the feeling of lips and fine mist on your skin, that first sip of wine, a flute of fizzing sekt sipped at midnight on a street corner wet with ice, firecrackers popping so close it makes you jump. the first time, the lights, then the darkness, the newspaper, the smell of newspaper.

only this morning you went walking before the world woke up. sky the colour of murky tea, the footpath dredged with petals from an overnight storm. still and quiet now. crepe myrtle blossoms, frilly as a church-dress hem, scatter the concrete. the trees dense with pollen.

the smell of wet flowers takes you back.

sometimes you’d stay up in the frangipani tree for hours.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons