If I Disappeared Within Me
Poem 10: The fear of being without the most precious thing.
This is Poem 10 of a poetry collection. The final count will be between eighteen and twenty-two poems, depending on which ones earn their place by the end. Each poem will be accompanied, two days after it drops, by the drafts that preceded it.
A couple of weeks ago, late at night, I listened to an episode of The Daily Podcast titled “Why Do Some Memories Survive Dementia?” In it, New York Times reporter Ellen Barry’s talk about her father’s dementia and the years she and her family spent trying to manage his erratic behavior because of the illness. The episode also explored what research suggests we could do to help us save precious moments from being erased forever.
Listening to podcasts about research or philosophy in the hours before calling it a day is part of my routine. This time around, the emotions I experienced shortly after the episode were out of the ordinary. I went about my routine: finished the dishes, made coffee, sat down to read book. I was awash with a profound sense of sadness.
I once told someone that I loved her so much I would give up my thoughts for her. Those words came to hunt me that night. It got me thinking about how frightening it would be to lose yourself. Your thoughts. Your memories. I thought even if science could find a way to preserve precious memories, we wouldn’t know we needed the intervention until we had already lost something. And that, no matter what, we all know how the movie ends.
I stopped what I was doing and wrote these lines:
