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“Life’s all about moments of impact and how they change our lives forever. But what if one day you could no longer remember any of them?” Leo Collins (a.k.a Channing Tatum), The Vow
A lot of people will be able to recognize that line and there are those who remember those words by heart. But have you ever really asked yourself that big “what if”? This is not a movie review, neither is it a summary nor a set of quotes from the movie. But I think it is appropriate to take off from those lines.
“What if one day you could no longer remember anything?”
Suffering from a cold, I asked my dad if there are still herbs available from the house next door (which belongs to my aunt and grandma from dad’s side), he said there are none, it’s only my grandma who is fond of planting and she no longer does. My grandmother is 90 years old, she is healthy, her eyes and hear hearing are still good BUT she does not know me anymore, nor does she know any of her children or grandchildren. I remember spending afternoons in her house, listening to stories that she tells with such enthusiasm. She used to wake us (my cousins) up at six in the morning for breakfast when we would spend the night at her house, and she would fill our plates with food and the hard-boiled egg is never out of the menu, then she would tell us to eat everything there, which we then considered a great feat. But what I looked forward to was her hot chocolate, which, no one else can prepare the way she does, come to think of it, does she remember that recipe? The way she holds the wooden thing to mix the hot chocolate the old-fashioned way, it’s like an art and that memory will forever be engraved on my mind. There are a lot of fond memories with grandma, it’s just sad that she no longer remembers any of it. Just like her herb garden, those memories are no longer there.
Grandma has not completely lost her memory, there are facts that she recalls well. She knows her complete name, date of birth and other similar data. But what really touched me, is that, even if she does not recall who we are most of the time, she remembers one person so clearly, as if it was 70 years back (or sometime close to that), she remembers my grandfather, her husband up to this very day. She knows how, when, and where they met; she remembers the date of their wedding. It seems like a once in a lifetime love that will never be erased from her mind. My grandfather died long before I was born, long before my parents met; he died when my dad was still in elementary and grandma never remarried nor entertained such thought. Perhaps in her subconscious mind she wants to relive those moments, to freeze those memories when they were still together or perhaps it’s just the romantic in me thinking that way.
Leo was right, there are moments of impact that can change our lives. These moments often happen when we least expect them to, and the best thing to do is to cherish those moments, relish the feelings that come with them and make the most out of every second because we never know if there will be a next time, or, if one day we can still remember it all. Carpe diem!
Yue Learns 