Being home for the holidays makes me especially nostalgic. Between my childhood bedroom furniture and forced time with family, I’m just about cornered with reminiscence. So during my Thanksgiving break, it felt appropriate to spend an afternoon watching old home videos. Cautiously, I slid “Christmas 2001” into the DVD player and prayed that a device so ancient still worked. I sat on the couch, pulled my knees to my chest, and waited for the video static to fade.
My dad appeared on the TV, surrounded by a sea of presents on the floor of an old house in California I barely remember. I haven’t spent a holiday with him in years, since he left and my parents got divorced. “Emmy!” His voice called through the speakers. A tiny version of myself stumbled over and fell into his lap. I stole his glasses and held them high above my head, totally convinced he would never be able to retrieve them from my towering, two-year-old body. He tickled my stomach as I collapsed into laugher and surrendered the glasses. The screen turned black.
Later that day, after watching the DVDs, I was driving to the mall to get out of the house and look for a Secret Santa gift for one of my housemates. My Bluetooth wasn’t working, so I was subject to the songs on the radio. Suddenly, against my own will, I was listening to the song an ex-boyfriend and I had deemed as “ours,” which I hadn’t listened to since the night I drove home from his family’s Christmas celebration nearly a year ago.
After just the first couple seconds of the song, I was mentally right back in his driveway, leaning against my car door. We were saying goodbye for the rest of winter break because he was leaving for vacation the next morning. We looked at each other under the lights of his house and said I love you. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, which I remember felt like the warmest escape from the cold. He kissed me before I eventually pulled away, got in the car, and, naturally, put on our song. In that moment, I had no idea it would be the last time I’d ever be with him as my boyfriend.
Both on the couch after the DVD played and in my car on route 83 driving to the mall, I felt like I’d just gotten punched in the stomach. A cute video and a sappy song had beaten the emotional shit out of me. Beyond feeling pretty pathetic, I felt betrayed. How could memories that were once so innocent and happy turn into such painful reminders of what I no longer have?
I was mad at the people who left me, but I was even madder at myself for missing them. By now, I thought I was over it. I thought I was okay. But as I rested my forehead on the cold steering wheel at the next red light, helplessly trying to cool down my face that was on fire with tears, I began to think my perceived progress had been deceivingly optimistic.
Whether they're from a single year ago or a whole twenty, certain memories of people we have lost hurt in the same way. I’ve concluded that good memories are even harder to process than bad ones, which I guess is because the good is hardest to lose. So to avoid having to process the good at all, I stubbornly pretend it never existed. I keep lost people as distant as I can, along with every single positive thing about them I ever experienced.
Part of this denial comes from the trouble I’ve had with grasping how people who hurt me so badly can be the same people pictured in the home videos and imagined behind the love songs. It seems impossible to believe that the past versions of them that I knew and loved, that live in my memory like ghosts, could ever decide to walk away. The people I loved and the people who left cannot possibly be the same. But somehow, they are.
As I’ve struggled to come to terms with the confusing contradiction, I’ve realized we wouldn’t be so hurt by people if we didn’t love and care about them first. Devastating decisions that were made and difficult realizations that followed don’t negate the amount of meaningful time spent with someone. A divorce doesn’t take away all the board games and bike rides and childhood years with my dad. A breakup doesn’t erase all the nicknames and secrets and late nights with an ex-boyfriend.
Rather than take these memories as reminders of pain and loss, why can’t we take them as reminders of love? Not unreciprocated, heartbreaking love, but instead the most pure kind of love that was able to create these memories at all. What if every layer of grief we’re forced to navigate is a layer of love we built in the first place?
Maybe no amount of healing can make the happy memories any easier to forget. But maybe healing isn’t about forgetting. Maybe healing is being able to accept these happy memories exactly as they were.
I’ll never know what the memories mean to the other people involved. In fact, I’ll never know what I meant to them at all. But instead of pretending like they never meant anything to me, I’m going to admit that they did. And the proof is in the videos and songs and pictures and jokes that will return every so often, as I make new memories with new people who I’ll love in new ways. Even though people come and go against our control, the love we are able to give and accept will always be ours to hold onto.
So to anyone who has ever lost someone they loved, either recently or long ago, from decisions or distance or even death, be gentle with yourself this holiday season. And when memories come back to visit, let them stay for just enough time to remind you of your incredible capacity to love. Because that, I assure you, is something that will never leave.