"Do you still remember this place?" he asked, still pushing my wheelchair up to the hill.
"No," I answered. I observed the yellow dandelions under the early greet of sunlight. It's a fascinating view for me, but I couldn't find calmness in it. My eyes couldn't help but look at my shaking and veinous hands.
"This is where I first brought you for our date, around 1948. Do you still remember it?"
"How old are we again?" I asked him out of place.
Chuckling, he sat in front of me. "We are seventy-three years old, Miranda."
"How old?" I repeated. "How old are we?"
"Seventy-three years old." I sensed the peaceful answer of him. He hasn't been annoyed by that repetitive question of mine. Compared to those times that he was shouting before, he is now peaceful and conserved inside. He seemed like a calm ocean amid the raging storm of the past.
"We're still young," I told him. "Seventy-three? Not bad. It's not even close to one hundred."
"But we are not becoming any younger anymore." He held my hands. "You have Alzheimer's, and I have Hyperthymesia."
"Who is Alzheimer?" I quickly turned my head in his direction. "Who is Alzheimer?"
I didn't know if he just mentioned a name, or that's the way it should have sounded to me with a disease.
"You know it," he murmured, "it is when you forget everything about your life."
He continued pushing my wheelchair into the hilltop until I saw the sea from a distance. The birds are soaring the salty atmosphere— above the dancing waves. This scenery is familiar, and I fully remember it.
"The life of a human being is short, Miranda." He murmured. "Do you know what's the difference between our conditions?"
"What is it?"
"In Alzheimer, you forget me and everything." He didn't dare to look at me into my eyes as his sorrow continued to fuel his words. "In Hyperthymesia, I remember everything. Every day. Every second. The vast majority of our timeline together is written in me."
I didn't speak anymore.
Confusion took me under a spell of time.
"Who are you, again?" I asked him. "And why I should remember you?"
I noticed the tears vividly coming out of his eyes. Those wrinkles pushed back while the sadness devoured the pressure of an answer to come out from his mouth.
"I'll always remain the who-are-you old man until your last breath, Miranda."
Days passed by, and I tend to forget more about this man.
Then, one day, people just began crying at my back. Amidst the crowd in black, I looked for him through the wake of flowers and red, lavished carpet, but I am too late to realize that he is the one inside the coffin.
"Ma, let's go home." A girl, in her thirties, went to me. She pushed the wheelchair away from the tent and tried to maintain a face of courage.
"Won't we wait for him to stand from that wheelchair and let him push my wheelchair?" I asked her. "Isn't it that he is the one who always does the pushing?"
The girl began crying as she listened to my words of confusion. She seems to be in complete hurt.
"Ma, Papa has something that he wants you to hear about." She told me.
She sat in the soil and took a paper from his bag. From her eyes, tears fell into the smooth, scented surface of the thin-layered letter.
"Miranda," the girl began reading. "I want to tell you that I love you although you can't remember me anymore.
"All those days in my life with this Hyperthymesia. I always remember you at my bed, table, and workplace. I cried, ranted, and complained of why you. Why, among all women, it has to be you to suffer from Alzheimer's?
"You are too beautiful to forget me— us. It is just sad to know that: while we grow old, I'm becoming more lonely thinking of you while you forget about everything.
"In every memory that you forget, I am lost in my tears and shouts. I hope I can go back in time and remind you of how much I love you. I have my mistakes. Mortal mistakes. Sorry for not being the best husband, Miranda. Sorry for that. Your husband, Winston."
"Winston?" I repeated. "Is it his name?"
Gwen didn't answer me, but she just put me inside the car. As expected, the travel became sadder as the coldness started outside.
I looked outside the window. We are on the road in between of two barren lands of trees and bamboo. I felt my tears falling as raindrops started to sing with the Earth. I rested my head on the side of the window.
Beside me is my grandchild, Astrea. She is staring at me, confused about what to do.
"Why are you crying, Lola?" She held my hands.
I looked at her slowly. "I regret, Apo."
"What did you regret about?"
"For pretending that... I forgot him."
It might be days, weeks, or months, but I am sure that it wouldn't be years. I will continue to regret it until my deathbed.
I was too selfish.
I was too absorbed in my concept of hurting him. Now, I'm living alone in the house that Winston bought for us. Its walls are wooden and inspired by vintage designs. The graduation pictures of my sons and daughters are hanging on the wall.
I eat alone at the long table. I sleep alone in the large bed where my kids once slept with us.
This house was once a fun and noisy place because of brawls, games, and stories. It was a jar of random papers— memories. I could remember Winston teaching the children in the bedroom while I wash the clothes outside. I want to return to that golden time of my life.
It is just too sad to think of my burdens as I grew older than a strange, white thread of hair. Those memories vanish quickly.
I couldn't remove it from my head that people are like waves from the ocean. Waves come by your feet, but after that, they set back to go away. Winston is one of those waves.
I'll always look for that wave through an endless ocean. He'll be a bounty deal for me— my substantial hurt, my everyday pain.
