Part III · Others

Others & Ourselves

i don't think people ever really leave. i've spent years believing relationships end when people walk away. they don't. something always remains. a phrase. a habit. a way of apologizing. a fear that wasn't there before. a kindness that i forgot it belonged to someone else. i wanted to believe i carried my own voice through life unchanged. that every decision began somewhere inside me. that the person i became belonged mostly to me. i don't think that's ever been true. the phrases my father repeated still leave my mouth before i realize i'm speaking. my mother still reminds me to be gentle every time i pack my sons' lunches. teachers i haven't seen in twenty years still interrupt my thoughts with sentences i forgot i remembered. people i no longer love still influence the way i apologize. even strangers continue living inside me. a cashier's kindness. a doctor who stayed an extra five minutes. none of them know they survived inside another person's life. i've forgotten the voices of people i promised i would never forget. i can still hear sentences spoken by people whose names i no longer remember. that has always seemed backwards. memory doesn't seem interested in fairness. it keeps what it wants. it lets entire people disappear while preserving one ordinary after‐ noon. one joke. one look across a room. one sentence spoken without realizing it would outlive the person who said it. i assumed influence would be measured by time. i thought the people who stayed the longest would leave the deepest marks. they rarely do. sometimes another person only needs an afternoon. one conversation. one sentence spoken carelessly or tenderly enough to rearrange the thinking of another human being. i don't know what determines who remains. i've spent years believing i was becoming myself. now i find pieces of other people in places i was certain belonged only to me. i hear my father in my impatience. my mother in my tenderness. teachers in my questions. strangers in the smallest acts of kindness. i don't know when they became part of me. i only know i can no longer separate where they end & i begin. that changes the way i think about love. i used to believe love was measured by how long someone remained beside us. now i think it is measured by how long they remain within us. some relationships lasted decades & disappeared almost completely. others lasted a season & still arrive without warning. i think that is why endings are so difficult. people leave. but their touch doesn’t. my sons are teaching me this in reverse. every day they become a little more like me. every day i become a little more careful about the parts of myself i leave behind. i have stopped wondering what they will remember. children are always remembering. now i wonder which parts of me will still be speaking in them after i no longer can? is this always been what it means to know another person? not only to love them while they are here. but to keep discovering the places they never really left?