Snapshots and Telephone memories

The way we form memories is funny. We don’t remember events in and of themselves. We remember the last time we were remembering the memory with the beliefs attached to it, and the next time we would be remembering the last time, and so on.

It’s kind of like a game of telephone. In much the same way, by the end of the line you’d get a memory that's full of gaps, grown jagged edges in wrong places, and likely distorted enough that you can't tell what was and wasn't altered. The ones that stick the strongest are the ones that are emotionally charged, the ones that send your heart racing, a snapshot of our feelings freezing the moment.

The thing about feelings, though, is that the negative ones deliver a stronger shock to our system than the positive ones. The thing about grief is that it colors every memory bittersweet with the realization that no new ones would be made.

***

Declarative memory involves memories of facts

When I adopted a senior chihuahua named Peter, it was spur of the moment. I’d grown up with family dogs, and I’d graduated into a stable job with a new apartment. I saw his picture on Petfinder, a sweet little face with eyes the size of olives, and his tongue sticking out to the side. Still running on the fresh Bachelor of Arts drive to perfect essays, filling out the adoption form took hours of rework and second-guessing.

I never actually ended up sending that first, carefully polished, painstakingly scripted draft. I second guessed, overcome by doubt, and accidentally closed the tab with the open application and took it as a sign that it wasn’t time to apply yet.

I sent a messy form that hadn’t been proofread, in a rush after the shelter owner mentioned offhand in an email chain we had coincidentally started, that there were a lot of applicants for Peter. I didn’t think it would be easy, but I had to at least get my hat in the ring.

When I was approved less than two weeks later, I spent a third of my paycheque at Petsmart getting everything under the sun. I got different kinds of food, consulted different dog owners on what was needed and bought two of everything. There was the lingering doubt, the feeling of everything is happening so fast, can I really do this?

Bringing him home brought those doubts right back. The foster mother lived a ten-minute walk from my apartment, but it took forty to walk back with Petey since he stopped every few steps to turn back. I was close to tears, not wanting to pull him as the foster advised to. Mid-way through a couple with a dog - I don’t remember what it was now, but a smaller breed - walked with us, delighted at the story of a rescue finding a home, and shouted encouragements that got him moving a few shuffling steps forward.

When he first came home, he was a small thing of skin and bones, and extremely skittish. Round eyes that took up literally half his tiny face, and no teeth from years on the streets rotting them to the point that the shelter owner had to remove them. This made his tongue loll out to the left side of his mouth, constantly. His tongue would get try and I’d poke it gently, to which he’d respond with an irritated lick.

He was skittish for the first half hour, carefully sniffing at the cactus-shaped dog bed I’d gotten and the new toys scattered about. There was a squeaky toy resembling a Doritos bag with the words Dogritos across the front. He bypassed it in favor of the fist-sized Niffler plushie from The Fantastic Beasts series I’d gotten from a friend.

The first time he rolled over for a belly rub was magical.

So was the last time.

***

I told my therapist once - “I remember what my grandpa’s voice sounded like, deep and loud, filling the whole room whenever he spoke. I don’t remember what his hug felt like. I don’t remember the jokes he used to tell.”

It was like the world’s most depressing deja vu.

I remembered the way Petey stretched in the mornings, little paws extended as far forward as they could go, rump pushing upwards. I didn’t remember how he smelled.

I remembered that he liked to hide in the closet. I didn’t remember how warm his body was pressed to mine when he’d lean on my side to sleep. I didn’t remember how his bark sounded, outside the distorted audio of petcam recordings.

The urn he came back in had a domed lid, shaped uncannily like the top of Petey’s short-haired head, which always tickled warmly against my chin. But the metal was cool when I pressed my lips to it.

***

Flashbulb memories are etched deep into the psyche; vivid, emotionally charged, and long-lasting, but usually distorted by emotion

Here is a snapshot memory in the literal sense, immortalized in a 2022 calendar and a local neighborhood official Instagram account.

I was out on a friend’s birthday picnic at a park with my church friends. It was sunny, but as I’d learned Canada weather was wont to be, pretty chilly.

It had been several months since Peter and I had come together. I'd renamed him Petey, because I having a name that was too human made me paranoid I might date someone with the same name, and it'd just be weird. I'd debated renaming him Benny, after my grandfather Benjamin, but he'd already been responding to variations of 'Pete'.

Petey had filled out a bit, gaining a shape that was closer to 'small barrel' than it was 'tube with ribs'. He was in an adorable little get up - a formal tie clipped to his collar, a dark blue hoodie with red trimming and a fake Adidas logo stamped on the back, and a tiny pastel pink bucket hat with what could have been lemons printed on it. The only thing that matched was the bucket hat and my pink pants. In short, he was a walking fashion disaster, but an adorable one.

“That dog is nothing but eyes and ears,” my mom said when she first saw him on video call.

Petey trailed around after me as he always did, sticking close and exploring only the square of fabric I was sitting on. He shied away from others and stuck close to my side, wagging immediately when our eyes met.

I lived alone and wasn't one for photos of myself. But that day, I handed the camera over to my friend, lifted Petey into my lap as grass stains soaked into the knees of my pants, and smiled for the camera.

***

I was my grandfather's oldest grandchild for almost ten years, and he spoiled me rotten. When I got my offer for the Creative Writing course at UBC, no one was more excited than him, when the rest of my Asian family exhibited reservations that it wasn't Harvard or Business.

My grandfather, a doctor and a big name in his field, just printed out rankings and programs of UBC's Creative Writing department and told everyone he met how proud he was of me.

My grandfather also loved dogs. There was always a dog at his house, and the last was a large, brown-and-white basset hound named Brandon, who would rest his head in my lap every Saturday when we came for dinner.

Brandon died my first year into university, 13.000 kilometers and 15 timezones away.

My grandfather, Opa, followed after a little over a year later. I wasn't at the funeral. International flights and poor timing.

The years that followed were a mixture of bittersweetness. I transferred majors, then transferred again until I had a double major in Psychology and International Relations and a minor in Creative Writing. I did end up going to Harvard, presenting a paper on domestic worker rights. I was ecstatic, but there was always one big hole in the background - the person who had celebrated my achievements most was not there to see them.

A photo of Opa sits next to Petey's in his memorial, a shelf in the storage room of my studio apartment.

I like to think they're all together now, Opa, Petey, and Brandon, in God's home across the rainbow bridge.

***

Long-term memories are stable and last for years - kept indefinitely in the most secure storage area of our brains

In the days that followed, I received condolences and memories from no less than fifty people.

There was a homeless man at the corner of my apartment block who giggled delightedly at Petey's short legs every time we passed him on walks and handed him a coffee from the nearest Starbucks. I approached him for a long chat for the first time with a fresh coffee, learned his name was Tim, and saw his face crumple in genuine distress.

"We'll keep little Peter in our prayers," he told me earnestly.

"Your aunt only met him once," my mom told me, "And I never did. But we were sad. I saw his pictures every day."

"He'd come closer if we pretended we weren't looking at him, and run away whenever someone called for him," our sitter Jennifer remembered. "We snuck him a lot of turkey for Christmas."

"He would wag only when he saw you, and we all found him cute," my church leader said. "He pooped in the corner of the church storage room once."

"He loved you so much," my best friend said.

***

I remember the way Petey would rush over whenever I headed towards the front door, eager to come with, wherever we were going. How every time we would go out for a walk, he’d do delighted spins, belly-flop to the ground in excitement for a second then hop up to shoot down the hallway, passing the elevator before doubling back.

How the first time we went to the vet, he screamed and dashed as far away from the vet as the narrow operating table would allow, but he scrambled up my torso when I stepped close enough to the table, clinging to my shoulders. He’d never let anyone else get that close.

“He was like that grumpy old man who only loved one girl,” his foster mother told me, a week after he died. “And that one girl was you.”

***

Memories are funny things. They are inaccurate, bittersweet, gap-toothed and jagged in the wrong places. They can be like a game of telephone, a bit or entirely different at the end, but filled with laughter and joy among friends as the game winds to a close. They can be like a snapshot, quick and immortalized, and good and bad by turns, but existing and forming a part of your life.

They are cherished, each and every one, in all their hurts and joys.

pI don’t remember the way Petey smelled. I don't remember the way my grandpa's hug felt.

But I have Petey's outfits and bed that carry his scent. I have his favorite toys that he would cuddle to sleep with. I have my grandpa's photos and printouts and letters.

I have my imperfect pieces of memories of the most perfect boy, my photos and videos, and the love he shared with others.

When the scent fades from, when toys are worn or lost, when context falls away from photos and videos and voices fade from letters - I will always, always remember the love I have for them.

Thank you Petey, for making your mom so happy. Take care of Opa for me.

Until we meet again.

When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure - Author Unknown