What I’ll always remember

I can’t remember. I’m obsessed with remembering but I can’t remember. I struggle to remember my mother’s voice or the things she used to say.

Actually, she loved Finding Nemo and she quoted it like the Bible. She always said that she could preach a sermon on that movie.

She loved to read books. She loved to better herself, she was always tinkering with herself. She did Toastmasters and Weightwatchers when the time needed. She started her own business. She was an accomplished woman.

I remember that. But I don’t seem to remember the good stuff like quotes that don’t revolve around Finding Nemo. Oh, I remember that she used to write me letters. And she was so encouraging. She gave me confidence when I didn’t have any of my own. I miss her.

She raised two sons, and three boys if you include my dad who relied on her to be his anchor.

I remember what I don’t want to remember. That day that I wish I could go back and change a thousand times but have since learned to accept. The day that she left forever I was unprepared. Like a bullet shot from a gun death pierced me in a way that I’ll never forget. That I remember.

It was five o’clock in the afternoon and I got a phone call from my best friend. I was asleep when he called and so I had to get my bearings as his voice sounded through the phone speaker. He asked me this question I can’t forget. “Are you sitting down?” I was lying down, and immediately my mind started turning over thoughts of what he might be about to tell me.

My best friend married my cousin and had become a fixture in my family. He was family. So when he asked if I was sitting down I scrolled through my mind for who could have died.

I was preparing myself to hear that my grandmother had passed. He was in Orlando, I was in Tallahassee and I remember feeling the chasm of distance between us. There was this essence of knowing that I needed to be where he was.

What he told me wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, I didn’t ever expect to hear it and definitely not from him. He said, “Chandler, your mom’s dead,” and I said, “What? You’re joking right?”

I was in shock. I asked him again, “Are you joking?” He sorrowfully said, “No,” and the rest seems like a blur. I remember calling my brother and telling him the news. I remember my dad eventually calling me, inconsolable as he explained to me what happened to her.

She had been sick for a week. It was a week that she had been misdiagnosed with the flu and consequently passed of meningitis, which we would find out later. I hadn’t spoken to her that week and didn’t even know she was sick. Maybe she didn’t want me to worry.

There are things I wish we could have done differently. I wish my dad had made that phone call instead of my best friend. Maybe the shock wouldn’t have been so numbing. I wish I had called her that week to talk. But life rarely goes according to plan and you have to live with what you get.

Still, I wish I could remember more, more about her, more about us. It’s been almost 10 years since she went away and the thoughts of that night still echo with severity.

But I’m learning to accept things that I cannot change. I’m now letting myself remember because I want those thoughts of her smile to come to the forefront of my mind when I think of her. Sometimes they feel so elusive. But little by little I feel her angelic presence with me each day. I remember the cards she would send me saying, “You can do it. I believe in you.” And maybe that’s what we have to do in spite of moments gone, every once in a while put on Finding Nemo and allow good memories to take hold. My mom always said you can preach a sermon from that movie. And that I’ll always remember.

Chandler Collins is a staff writer for The Southeast Sun and Daleville Sun-Courier. The opinions of this writer are his own and not the opinion of the paper. He can be reached at (334) 393-2969 or by email at [email protected].