Memories as her Sanctuary – December Free Choice

 

 

There are many moments in our lives where we may feel not in control and feel bound to the shackles of our present circumstances. It’s like if someone made us take care of something, a ‘garden’ for instance, and deep on the inside we want the ‘garden’ to die in front of us, so that we can feel like we are running our own lives, but we never are, are we?

 

Not too long ago, I met a woman named Hellen at the Bow View Manor retirement home for an interview. Out of many of the people I’ve met there, she seemed the most restless; there was something about the way she moved – no, there was something about her misty eyes, something which revealed that she wasn’t actually here and that she was somewhere far away, somewhere where life wasn’t ‘made of lines’. 

 

This building was her ‘phantom limb’, which haunted her day and night, not letting her feel free, but she didn’t let that stop her. She never seemed to be in the present but somewhere far away from here, especially when she began to speak of her past. 

 

Her pain could be heard through her voice, making me feel restless, and this pain is what she endured every day. I certainly can’t imagine that. She would speak about her past, about how she was born in Hungary and moved over to Canada at the age of four, how she grew up in a quiet and simple neighbourhood, how she had freedom. 

 

As a child, she would skii down the deep slopes of mountains, feeling the cool snow moisten her gentle cheeks in the morning – this place would be her sanctuary. She had control over these mountains, and the snow would blow around and follow her, as if she was ‘Moses’ leading the ‘Hebrews out of Egypt’. 

 

I would ask her another question, and she looked back at me, almost angrily as if I disturbed a pleasant thought. We would continue with the interview. 

 

A few more questions about her personal life, and in the exact same way, she would lower her gaze, as if she was breathing in that lost moment once again. Something rekindling in her eyes. It was as if she was protesting against the constraints of this retirement home through her memories, as if her memories are what made this ‘garden out of order’. This was her silent act of rebellion.

 

Sometimes these memories would cause her pain, and one could tell that they did because of the way her indifferent smile turned into a frown, and she would look away. But, as she grew more comfortable with my presence, she gathered the will and conviction to face these memories again and return to a better place. I almost saw her smile come back, although she rarely did smile. Each time she would go back to her memories would be an act of rebellion, an act of her misaligning the stones in this ‘garden’ and rearranging them into a ‘pile’. This building had been acting like a ‘prosthetic wrench’ and was ‘tightening’ its grip on her, but every time it did, she would flee back to her thoughts. 

 

Her memories were her sanctuary.

 

These four walls could never contain her. What I and these four walls could never understand is that Hellen is more than ‘just another string’ which this building ‘fails to tune’ – she is a woman, not an object that needs to be restored, refined, and re-polished. 

 

Minutes would have passed, and I would start speaking again. Then she would look at me once again with those misty eyes, as if she had just woken up and seen a stranger in her room. And I would finally understand.

 

 

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