Forgotten Memories

Artwork by Alice Reid

Some memories don’t stay where you put them. Some slip through the cracks between breakfast and the next breath of fresh air. Some are between familiar faces and a name you used to say every day but can no longer remember. Some go quietly into the corners of your mind where
no one visits anymore. Others resurface with no warning; they appear as clear as if they never left in the first place. 

She remembers how the kitchen smelled in winter: like warm soup and love. She remembers how he always knocked twice before coming in, even after forty years of marriage. She remembers the teacups he chipped, the songs he sang to no one in particular. But now she doesn’t remember what year it is, where the bathroom is, or why everyone looks so tired and annoyed when they talk to her. 

We like to think time moves forward, but for some people it folds. And when it folds, yesterday feels closer than today. The past doesn’t stay behind them; it lives besides them. Sometimes it’s louder than the present.  

The house still holds them both even though only one is still breathing – the other departed the living twenty years ago. She still sets the table for him, still hums their song. Somewhere else – between the creaking floorboards and the ticking of the old grandfather clock – keeps bleeding into here. She wakes before the sun and turns the kettle on. Ten minutes later she turns it on again, forgetting she already boiled the water. The steam goes around her like a memory trying to resurface. She hums a tune under her breath. It’s the same one she always hums, even if she no longer remembers where she learnt it or who used to sing along.  

She sets the table with shaking hands – using two plates and placing forks on the wrong side. She frowns, adjusts, resets and forgets. Something doesn’t feel right, but the feeling slips away before she can put a name to it. She calls out softly, as though someone might be in the next room. Her voice doesn’t echo, yet it doesn’t land anywhere either.  

Her granddaughter watches from the hallway quietly. She’s done this before, stood just out of sight and listened to her grandmother talk to empty chairs, pausing for unheard replies. She used to correct her and say, ‘He’s not here anymore.’ But now she just watches – because who’s to say what’s real? If his imagined presence brings her peace, why tell her otherwise? The grandfather clock continues to tick, one second late, then two. The clock is slowing but she’s stopped trying to fix something that time will eventually take. In this house, time is a soft and breaking thing. 

One afternoon, the sky turned the colour of an old bruise. The rain fell slowly, as if it were thinking about whether to fall or not. It was the kind of day that made the house feel smaller. Her granddaughter made soup; she stirred it without hunger, the spoon moving slowly around carrots that would go cold before they were eaten. From the next room she heard the soft murmur of a voice, a pause, then laughter. Her grandmother was talking with ghosts again. When she brought the bowls in, her grandmother looked up, eyes shining but kind. 

‘Oh, you’re here,’ she said. 

‘Of course I’m here,’ the granddaughter replied, smiling. 

The grandmother tilted her head slightly. ‘You remind me of someone.’  

One breath, then another. ‘I’m your granddaughter,’ she said softly. ‘You raised me.’  

The grandmother’s smile didn’t drop but it didn’t grow either. ‘Is that right?’ The granddaughter set the soups down, her hands shaking more than the spoons. Her grandmother picked up a napkin and unfolded it slowly, as if it might be a memory she’d lost. Or, maybe, one she’d rather not find. 

‘Have we met before?’ she asked. 

The granddaughter didn’t answer this time. She simply sat down in the other chair, across from the grandmother’s untouched soup, and opposite the woman who used to know her name. She traced the rim of her bowl with her finger, anchoring herself in her body, trying to ignore how insignificant she suddenly felt. Outside the rain finally started falling, and somewhere in the walls the house exhaled. 

It got worse quickly after that. She started forgetting to eat, then forgetting she’d eaten, then forgetting what the stove was for. The soup stayed on the bench for days, the smell sticking to the corners of the house like something rotting, like something giving up. Some days she’d call the granddaughter by her mother’s name. Other days, she didn’t call her anything at all. 

The grandmother started wandering. One afternoon, just after sunset, the granddaughter found her out on the footpath barefoot, staring at the sky like it had something to say. When she asked her what she was doing, her grandmother said she was looking for the bus and thought she was late for school. 

The next morning, she fell. It wasn’t dramatic. There was no loud crash, no cry for help. Just the sound of porcelain breaking, then stillness. The ambulance came quickly: the lights too bright, voices too loud. The granddaughter stayed with her the whole time even if the grandmother didn’t recognise her and spoke to her as if it were the first time they met. 

At the hospital she was small in the bed, wrapped in pale blankets and sterile silence. Her granddaughter tried to talk to her, to read her old recipes, to play the song she used to hum, but nothing got through.  

She passed just before sunrise, eyes half-open like she was still trying to remember something. And in that stillness, the house finally let go of its breath.