Sometimes I think back over my many short years and they flash before me like a butterfly, vivid yet fleeting. But they always slide away like a dewdrop in the morning heat. The doctors tell me I’ll live among my memories soon enough, that I will no longer have a present except in my past. Sometimes I don’t believe them. How can such a strong man ever become so hopelessly lost in his own brain? But other times, I think of the liquid nature of my memories, how they slip away like molten glass, and I sink into pure terror.
I don’t want to live in a jungle of confusion. I don’t want to hurt my sons, not remembering their names. I don’t want to forget my grandchildren’s cherubic faces. I am afraid. And yet the one thing I want most to remember is slipping away fastest, because I have never told anyone. Will you remember it for me, when I have fallen into nonbeing?
When I was a pilot in the war, Jeremy and I were inseparable. He had blazing red hair and freckles and was not a day older than eighteen. We passed a nickel back and forth between us, each day. It was a token of being alive. Sometimes the only time we saw each other was in the mess hall, when we would pass the nickel for another day. He’d smile as the nickel changed hands. “Can’t believe you made it outta that one,” he’d say, and thump my shoulder three times.
Jeremy shaved my eyebrows one night as I slept. We had been off duty and celebrating our last day of freedom before returning to the war. I had gotten a little drunk, homesick for the pretty young bride I barely knew back home, so I never woke as Jeremy shaved both my eyebrows clean off my forehead.
Well, there was nothing to do but retaliate when I found my brows hairless and strange in the morning. I found Jeremy’s helmet and filled it with shaving cream. He was suiting up as he passed me the nickel. “You carry it today, naked-eyes,” he said.
I pocketed the nickel and watched with a smirk as he climbed up into his helicopter. He didn’t put on his helmet until he was in the air. Over the microphone, I heard him mutter, “You son of a—”
The helicopter exploded. Shot down by the enemy. The grin faded from my lips as I clutched the nickel in my pocket. I didn’t even duck from the debris flying everywhere. I just held on to that nickel as tightly as I could. I just knew Jeremy could come back if I held on to that nickel.
I still have the nickel, after all these years. The memory slips away from me like dew on a crisp golden apple on a warm autumn morning, and in some ways, I am happy to see it go. One day, it will just be a nickel. I hope someone holds on to it for me.
