I doodled along the edges of the paper, making tiny swirls and intricate mazes of triangles. The paper itself was cheap. Thin and flimsy under the heaviness of my pen strokes. On it were a series of questions that should have been easy for me to answer. I continued doodling, my pen lazily making a tornado of swirls down the side, and glanced over the list again.
What’s my favorite food?
Where did I go to university?
What was my major?
When is my birthday?
Who’s the prime minister of Canada?
Who’s the premier of Ontario?
Who’s the president of the United States?
Where did I take my last vacation? Who with?
Where do I live?
Where do I work?
How long have I worked there?
Do I exercise?
Do I have any allergies?
Who was my childhood best friend?
Have I ever had a pet?
What are my current hobbies?
They were all questions taken from a sample list Dr. Kay had given me. “It’s meant to spark your memory,” she’d said when she’d handed me the papers. “Some of these seem like silly, incredibly simple things. But it will help your memory confidence, being able to get the answers right and with ease.”
Memory confidence. This was a new term to me, but one Dr. Kay used often during our sessions. Our goal, as she explained it, was to help me build a framework for my memory. To create the landscape the way it existed today, and to work off that rather than trying to go back to how things were before I slipped on the ice.
“Lucy, we hope you get your memories back, but there are no guarantees things will get better than they are now. Your memory is a bit like a trickster at the moment, and we need to help you find a way to trust it again.”
So I’d been writing down memories I knew were real, the way you add a completed to-do item on a list for the satisfaction of checking it off. Memories from my childhood were easiest and most concrete, like when only a year after I was gifted my beloved birthday bike with the rainbow tassels, it was stolen and I told my parents I had locked it up—though I hadn’t. Or the time in ninth grade when I forged a doctor’s note and skipped school, then got caught when the principal called my mom to check how I was feeling because I’d misspelled tonsillitis (tonsellitus) and she was onto me.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about this “honest lying” thing. I mean, I’ve told friends I loved their haircuts when I didn’t, told bosses I made a dinner reservation for out-of-town clients when I didn’t (I forgot, blamed it on the hostess) and exclaimed my delight over gifts I knew I would be regifting or returning. These are all times I lied, on purpose and with intent. But now my own memory lied to me and I was as gullible as I had been when Alex told me as a kid if I swallowed my gum it would expand until my stomach exploded.
“It may not feel like it,” Dr. Kay said, bringing me back to the present. “But we’re making progress. Great progress actually.” She pointed to the list, my new cheat sheet, where I had been diligently filling out answers and adding questions.
Along with my memory confidence list, Dr. Kay and I spent a lot of time talking about Daniel, which I appreciated because he was a topic avoided in most other conversations I was having. My parents seemed to believe if they didn’t mention him, or the fabricated marriage memory, it didn’t exist, and after the coffee incident that first morning, Matt and I hadn’t discussed Daniel at all. I understood why no one wanted to talk about it, of course, but it was hard on me not to acknowledge him.
So Dr. Kay’s office was one place I could share—without worrying about how it all sounded—what I was feeling when it came to Daniel, which was a cornucopia of things. Loss. Confusion. Love. Bewilderment. Abandonment. Desire. Guilt. She never said much when I talked of Daniel, simply nodded encouragement to keep going, keep sharing, and on occasion would pepper the discussion with a few questions to keep things moving. To prevent me from shutting down and folding into myself, which many times I desperately wanted to do.
Depression was, according to Dr. Kay, an issue we needed to stay on top of. “It’s not unusual for people suffering memory loss to also suffer depression,” she said. “Accepting things as they are versus how you wish they could be is a challenge for anyone, but especially for those who are struggling with big holes in their recall.”
I wondered if I might already be depressed. I was far from feeling happy about things, but having never experienced depression—or at least having never remembered experiencing it—I wasn’t sure what we needed to keep an eye on exactly. Mentally, I added it to my set of questions. Ask Jenny or Alex if I’ve ever been depressed. I figured if I had been, I would have confided in one of them.
“How are things on the relationship front?” Dr. Kay asked, and I looked up from the list and my doodles.
“Well, I’m working on accepting Daniel and I aren’t actually married, if that’s what you mean,” I replied.
She smiled. I knew that wasn’t what she had meant, but I didn’t feel like talking about Matt right now. “How’s that going?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Okay?” She waited for me to continue. I sighed. “I can still picture our wedding day so clearly. The dress. The flowers. The rings.” I looked down at my bare left ring finger, tucked my hand under my thigh. “But I think I might be remembering my sister Alex’s wedding.”
“What makes you think that?” Dr. Kay asked.
“I was going through some photos my mom and dad brought over, and Alex’s dress looks pretty similar to mine. Or the one I thought I wore. At a wedding I apparently didn’t have.”
The dresses—the one I remembered wearing when I married Daniel and the one Alex wore on her wedding day—were not similar; they were identical. Peach-colored satin, but so pale it looked almost off-white in the sunshine. Vintage-style, to the knee with a rhinestone belt and capped short sleeves. Remembering myself in that dress had been somewhat confusing, though, because it was a style I would never have imagined myself wearing. My perfect dress would have been more classic, based on my style: maybe a strapless A-line, with a modestly poufed skirt, in winter white.
So how could I explain the vintage peach satin dress I thought I wore, which was much more Alex’s style? I couldn’t. Until I saw the photos of her wedding. I had forgotten entirely she was—well, had been—married. She and this sound engineer, Paolo, from Brazil met at a music festival in New York State and he followed her back to Toronto under the guise of a few weeks’ vacation. Apparently Alex sprang the city hall wedding on us two days before it happened, and she told me when recounting the story that Mom had been none too pleased, which should have surprised no one.
Our mother considered herself a forward-thinking parent: one more interested in experiential learning over structured homework; one who cared little if grandbabies came before a wedding; and one who would have been as delighted for Alex to marry a woman as a man, which was entirely possible. My sister didn’t subscribe to convention and since high school had been in plenty of relationships, gender irrelevant. My parents were happy when Alex was happy, so Mom couldn’t understand why she hadn’t told us about Paolo.
Alex and Paolo were married for less than a month before having the marriage annulled when Paolo went back to Brazil. As it turned out, his first wife was as surprised by this spontaneous wedding as my parents, and I, had been.
“And it wasn’t only the dress. We both had cupcakes instead of wedding cakes. And her bouquet was...my bouquet,” I told Dr. Kay. “She carried paper flowers. They were beautiful.”
“How does it make you feel, knowing these facts don’t belong to you?”
It was a strange way to put it, but she wasn’t wrong. I had taken ownership over the details, had crafted an entire section of my past around them without ever realizing they weren’t mine. How did it make me feel? Completely unhinged. Like I might never find my way back.
“It makes me feel like I’m insane,” I said, being honest with Dr. Kay because I had no reason not to be. If she had a reaction to my use of the word insane, she didn’t show it. “But don’t they say crazy people don’t know they’re crazy? So maybe I’m okay?”
“You are okay,” Dr. Kay said, leaning forward onto her crossed knees. I was somewhat reassured. She looked relaxed, not concerned in the slightest by my admission.
“Mostly it makes me feel alone, and yet entirely reliant on other people,” I said. “I can’t remember some things, other things I’m remembering completely wrong and some stuff I’ve made up altogether. Who can possibly relate to that?”
“How much of these memories with Daniel have you shared with Matt?”
At first I said nothing. Wasn’t sure how to talk about Matt and Daniel in the same sentence without the hit of bitter guilt that came with it.
“You’re allowed to mourn the loss of the marriage you remember, Lucy. Your feelings are valid. I know you know this, but it’s worth saying again—these fabricated memories will feel as real to you as any confirmed memory does.” I nodded, looked down at my list, the words blurring as my eyes filled. “But that also doesn’t mean what you have with Matt isn’t real or important.”
“I miss him. Daniel, I mean.” I took a deep breath, fiddled with my watch. Saw our hour was almost up. “I have to keep reminding myself it didn’t happen, because...it still feels so real.”
Dr. Kay handed me the box of tissues and I took one. “Do you wish you could talk with him?” she asked.
“Daniel?” I said, wiping at my eyes. “All the time.”
She paused for a moment, considering this. “Then why don’t you try to contact him?”
“But...I thought that wasn’t a good idea. I’m supposed to be focusing on my ‘memory confidence’ and talking with Daniel, seeing him...” There was a flutter in my belly at the thought. Excitement. “Isn’t that going down a rabbit hole I should stay away from?”
“It’s possible seeing him will help your brain reconcile the missing pieces,” Dr. Kay said. “One of our goals in spending time together is to help you develop coping skills. And if you’re able to talk with Daniel and understand firsthand he’s not the person your memory wants you to believe, it may be easier to compartmentalize that particular issue.”
While I liked the idea of remembering things as they were, I was somewhat panicked at the thought of no longer recollecting Daniel as my husband. I was unsure what to do with Dr. Kay’s suggestion. On the one hand, getting permission to contact Daniel made me feel lighter than I had in weeks. It is doctor recommended, I could say, leaning heavily on this justification. She thinks it might help, I would add, and of course no one would question it then. They all wanted me to get better.
But on the other hand, what if I saw Daniel and all the memories I had of us together—being in love, being husband and wife—disappeared? Then I would be left without the safety that came with thoughts of Daniel. Because even if the memories were false, they were all I had.
“Apparently I haven’t spoken to him in four years,” I said. “Since we... Since I ended our engagement.”
“You don’t have to do this, Lucy,” Dr. Kay said. “But I understand your desire to track down the truth about things. To not have to rely so heavily on your family and friends to fill in the missing pieces. I think that’s a great instinct and you should see where it takes you.”
“But what would I say to him? I mean, this all sounds so...”
“Crazy?” she said, and we laughed. I was shaking, the thought of seeing Daniel, of talking with him, causing adrenaline to course through me. “Reach out however’s easiest for you, whether it be via email or phone, or even with someone else’s help,” Dr. Kay continued. “Just see what happens.”
In my mind I was already writing the script of what I would say to him, how I would say it. As if reading my mind, Dr. Kay asked, “To finish up today, why don’t you tell me what your expectations are for this meeting, if you decide to go through with it?”
Good question. “I honestly have no idea,” I said. “There’s a tiny, irrational part of me that wishes he’ll tell me I am remembering things right. That this has all been one big misunderstanding.” Dr. Kay smiled gently at me, though not in a pitying way. “And there’s a big part of me that hopes I get the closure I need. That seeing him will wiggle something in my mind and I’ll remember everything right and things will go back to normal.”
“What is that for you? ‘Normal.’”
I paused. Even if I was scared to shatter the connection I felt to Daniel, to accept we were not together and lose everything that came with that awareness, I realized I was more scared to stay in this wacky bubble where I couldn’t trust my own mind.
“I think normal is what life looked like five minutes before I slipped on that ice.”