December 2017, 7.48 a.m.
A long time ago I was told that the moments that were truly important in life were the moments we carry forward and recall on our deathbeds. Things like the perfect sunset. The moment we fall in love. A passing of someone dear.
As I lay in my bed, I was doing exactly that, as coming from the room next door was the sound of Thomas and Katie, talking and playing together. Their voices were my two most favourite sounds. Katie said something I couldn’t quite make out, but whatever it was it made Thomas laugh and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. I wanted to join them. But not yet, first I would use my senses as I had been taught.
It was a doctor who told me to let my subconscious take over when it mattered. A doctor who was one of the many I had fifteen years ago in the days, weeks and months after I woke up in a hospital bed. But he was the only one I would never forget. He was the one who first told me what had happened and helped me understand my life had re-begun. He helped me make sense of the facts. I was a broken body that didn’t know where it was. A broken body that didn’t know its name. A broken body whose even more broken mind couldn’t comprehend that it once had a past that it may never see again. Its memories, my memories, like all memories, tiny bubbles that contained joy and happiness, sadness, fear. Only mine had all been popped.
Our conversation, the one that helped to save me from the pit of despair I was in, came on a grey February morning. I was sitting staring out of the window nearest my bed, trying to find a reason to carry on and he, doing his morning rounds, approached. Noticing I was lost in thought he asked me what I saw. I told him I saw drizzle, darkness before looking away from the window, back to nothing in particular.
‘What about the trees?’
‘What about them?’
‘What do you see when you look at them?’
Sighing, I looked outside again, to humour the doctor. Thinking if I did he would go away and leave me alone.
‘They look dead,’ I said, holding his eye. I almost followed it up with a comment about how they were lucky, but stopped myself. The doctor sat on the end of my bed and looked outside. I watched him, wondering what he was doing. Doctors usually rushed in and out. I didn’t blame them retrospectively, I was intolerable to be around. I waited for him to say something, but for a long time he just sat, looking out of the window, a small smile on his face. The silence was too much.
‘What do you see?’ I questioned.
‘The same as you at first glance.’
‘So then why ask?’
‘Because I wanted to see how hard you looked.’
‘Doc, you aren’t making sense. If you don’t mind, I want to be left alone.’
He looked at me, the smile unmoving and nodded.
‘Before I do, Daniel, humour me once more and look again at the trees, but this time, look closer. Focus on the tree tops. Look at the way they are moving in the wind. Look at the very tips of those branches. What can you see?’
Reluctantly I did what he said and looked again, having to hide my astonishment when I focused on where he told me to. The trees may have looked dead at first glance, but as I focused I saw their tips starting to show the signs of sprouting buds that would become leaves eventually, they would attract birds who would nest and raise families. As he spoke I could almost smell the sweet scent a sapling gives off in spring. But I didn’t remember any springs, or summers, or autumns. Only winter, the one I watched from my window. I learnt that the small act of stopping to let my senses work properly helped me see something wonderful that was always there, and the morning wasn’t quite so dreary anymore. As he left my hospital room he told me if we embrace the stillness from time to time, we capture the moment entirely. His final words to me were that letting myself see the small things that really mattered wouldn’t help me remember my past, but it might just help me have a future. That day, I knew I could learn to hold on to the precious moments that were to come in my life. Things I would experience going forwards, and they could be wonderful if I let them, despite not knowing anything about the past. Shortly after that moment with the smiling doctor I was told I would be going home soon. I never saw that doctor again.
I have had several moments in the fifteen short years that I can remember where I have done exactly that. I stopped, I became still, and in doing so I made sure those moments were branded permanently in my mind so that no matter what may happen I would never forget them. Moments likes the two occasions I have fallen in love. The first time to Rachael, traditional, sweet, and almost as far back as I can remember. Two people who were nervous and excited. Full of possibilities. That first kiss suspending me above myself. I didn’t know then, but that first kiss would eventually lead to another wonderful moment when Rachael told me I was going to be a dad. A box presented to me, inside being a positive pregnancy test, a card and baby grow. Tears that fell and warmed my cheeks. Her smile, unfiltered.
The biggest moment of all is reserved for the day my son was born, six years ago. Although it feels like six minutes. His tiny body helpless and defenceless. His beautiful little head that fitted perfectly in my palm as I carried him towards his mummy who lay on the operating table post-caesarean. His cry, his voice. As I carefully moved towards her, his eye found mine and changed everything I assumed I knew about myself.
But there is also the second time I fell in love, more recently, to my Katie. Our meeting and dating coming from a place that was wiser, but no less powerful.
I may have had more of these moments in the years before 2003. But I would never know. Mum prefers never to speak of the time before the accident; it’s not important she tells me. I know that they’re memories that she doesn’t want to relive and I’m not interested in finding out about them, not when I have no way of remembering. She’s more focused on the man I am now – on rebuilding my life after what happened. She has spoken of my kindness though, my ability to love others and to jump into situations too quickly. Sometimes I will catch her staring into space and I just know she’s recalling another time, another me.
In some ways, me losing my past is harder for her, she has to mourn for the man I once was without mourning at all, and I knew, despite how much I wanted to know about the me before, that if I asked her outright, she might break her silence, spilling the bottled-up emotions she held on to for my benefit. Something I couldn’t do to her; she has been through enough. So I left it alone and focused on the now and the future. Which was Thomas and Katie.
From his bedroom I heard Thomas tell Katie what Santa had left him at Mummy’s house before asking her to build a tower from the Lego my mum had bought him. His voice was followed by the crashing sound of hundreds of plastic blocks being poured onto his bedroom floor. It wasn’t the words spoken or the sounds of Katie and Thomas building that would form into a lasting memory, but the context.
The woman I loved and the boy who means more than anything else in the world to me had formed a relationship that didn’t need me to mediate. I wasn’t required for them to be able to play and talk. I wasn’t needed for them to be able to know and care for one another. And, with what I had planned for after New Year, Katie and Thomas caring for one another in such a way was essential.
Katie still thought I was asleep. I knew because she was speaking in her quiet whispery tones despite Thomas not lowering his voice at all. Truth was, I’d not really been asleep since just after 4 a.m. A dream, my dream, waking me early. The same one I had been having for over a year. The one of the accident that took away my memories and the life before.
Slipping out of bed I tiptoed towards Thomas’s room. As I stepped in, I allowed myself a moment to enjoy the sight of them sat next to each other, him leaning into her as they built some sort of tower that stood about eighteen inches tall. Katie saw me first as Thomas was concentrating on his building task, and she smiled, looking from me to Thomas before resting her chin on his head. Her eyes told me everything. She was happy that he let her be close, she was content. After just over a year, he was treating her like part of his family. She mouthed a good morning to me, and I mouthed it back before turning my attention to my fixated boy.