Guessing Memories

The day after my father's funeral, I found my mother sitting on the back porch of our lifelong home, looking out over the endless meadows at sunset, her gray eyes tired and aching, rocking gently in her chair, humming their favorite song.

They say that those who love each other deeply for a long time are so attuned that their gestures are synchronized and even their physiognomies tend to resemble each other in a sincere mimesis.

That was what happened to my mother. I saw my father in her as if he were still alive, as palpable as my mother's rocking chair, the planks of the porch on which I was standing, or our own grieving bodies.

I approached her. She stopped singing and smiled sweetly.

“You look more like your father every day,” she said. “Besides, you're the same age he was when I met him.”

Surely, mimesis had also become evident in myself. I couldn't blame my mother for noticing it.

I sat down next to her and let her rest her head on my shoulder.

“We were very happy, all these years,” she said, in a whisper.

“Do you remember a special moment?” I asked.

My mother lost her gaze in the distance again, though I knew she was looking back in time.

I guessed that she was reminiscing about their first date in the town square on a spring afternoon, reading aloud the poems of Sylvia Plath that they both loved, Allen Ginsberg, Bukowski, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 and Blonde On Blonde, their first kiss, walking along the lake shore watching the fish jump, caressing each other and promising sex with marriage, reading Jack Kerouac under the moonlight, vows of eternal love and fidelity, watching Sunset Boulevard countless times with a deranged Gloria Swanson and William Holden floating face down in a pool with two shots in his back and one in his stomach, Double Indemnity with the unforgettable trio of Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson, and Farewell, My Lovely with Robert Mitchum playing the unforgettable Philip Marlowe, their wedding in a simple village chapel, the arrival of their first and only child, my first wobbly steps on that same porch, watching the same Robert Mitchum as the criminal with the words “Love” and “Hate” tattooed on his knuckles in The Night of the Hunter, summer afternoons drinking chamomile tea with butter cookies under the magnolia tree, listening to R.E.M., the Talking Heads, and King Crimson, the scent of jasmine at sunset, the fireflies lighting up the garden on summer nights, my father chopping wood with his axe by the lone willow tree next to the house, singing along to the lyrics of Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombone from memory — quite a feat —, the winter nights in front of the crackling logs on the hearth, the delicious apple cakes with cinnamon that she baked and were the delight of us all, my father returning from work at the bank, our vacations at the beach, my father painting the wooden fence white one weekend, Patti Smith and her album Horses, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, the lamb stews with thyme and rosemary that my mother used to make following her own mother's and grandmother's recipe, Woody Allen's Annie Hall, the day I introduced them to my wife and they fell in love with her as much as I did, Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, my father drinking a glass of bourbon whiskey without ice while petting his hound Cooper, all the albums by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town, listening to Lou Reed singing Romeo Had Juliette from his album New York and pretending that the young couple in love were the two of them — even though in the song Romeo is Rodríguez and not Montague and Juliette is Bell and not Juliet Capulet —, Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the day I introduced them to their grandson and they fell in love with him like two grandparents ready to spoil and pamper him, listening to Neil Young with his band Crazy Horse, listening to the entire Nebraska album by dear old Bruce, blueberry and custard pies, seeing the Coen brothers' masterpiece No Country for Old Men at the cinema, with an unforgettable Javier Bardem as the psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh, my father's cough and shortness of breath when climbing the stairs and my father's first appointments at the hospital, my mother bringing my father a steaming bowl of chicken soup to bed and whispering words of encouragement to him, listening excitedly to Bruce's song Radio Nowhere and shouting “I just want to feel some rhythm,” the first agonizing consultation with the oncologist, our last vacation together at the beach, Black Star, David Bowie's last studio album released just before his death, with its powerful song Lazarus, seeing M. Night Shyamalan's film Split together at the cinema with James McAvoy's masterful and disturbing performance, the dismal diagnosis of inoperability and the implementation of a palliative treatment, the bread puddings with banana and chocolate, the last days of my father's illness with his oxygen cannula at home, the farewell holding hands, the final farewell at the cemetery.

Her gray eyes moistened, she hugged me, sighed, and fell asleep on my shoulder. I felt her calm breathing, which conveyed a sense of peacefulness to me.

Soon I let myself be lulled by my memories, surely tinged with nostalgia and the frailty of memory, although probably quite accurate.

An owl hooted and startled me.

It reminded me that we were still alive.

BIO: Marcelo Medone (1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee fiction writer, poet, essayist, journalist, playwright and screenwriter. He received numerous awards and was published in multiple languages in more than 50 countries around the world, including the US. He currently lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Facebook: Marcelo Medone / Instagram: marcelomedone