Memories are like fish.

When you are bursting with the vitality of youth

You have a sturdy dam stretching across the river

A faithful sentry

That sits unmoving

Trapping all the writhing silver fish

Even as frothing white water slaps against its walls.

But if you have Alzheimer’s disease

Like my grandmother

That dam splinters and is swept into the raging currents

And all you can do is sit on the muddy banks

With a fraying net

And watch as all the fish stream through the gaping holes

Of your memory’s pitiful trap

Their little silver scales shining in defiance.

You see,

While I try to forget

The sight of my grandmother

Sprawled on the couch

Her lips babbling nonsense

Like an eccentric merry-go-round whirling in circles with a sputtering engine.

While I furiously try to sweep away

Exterminate

Obliterate

These memories that cloud my brain like smog,

I know that Grandma

Is crawling

In the dark, dark prison of her mind

And she is beseeching God

If religion has not been bleached by her illness

For memories

So many slivers of light that have vanished

As Alzheimer’s closes all the doors to her past

As she is locked away from

And forgets

Her childhood

Her husband

Her grandson’s name.

So do not throw a tantrum like an infant

When you break up with your girlfriend,

Do not wallow in the sweat of defeat after a championship game,

Do not feel the ghastly, sinister claws of exams ripping your grades

Do not try to wrap these scars

In the bandages of time

Even if the pain burns

Like the fires in the Devil’s realm

No,

Embrace your past

Embrace the many yawning chasms and snowy mountain peaks

That you slowly navigate on the road

Of Life

Embrace all the blissful joys and pains

Of memories because

You do not know the terror

Of forgetting.