Editor’s Note: This entry was originally posted on the author’s personal blog. It’s being reposted here because, well, the forgetting will always be a fickle friend.

Forgetting is a funny and fickle little thing.

For the most part, it is hard to forget. But when you don’t want to or when you least expect to, you do. I don’t remember the sound of her voice anymore, or the distinct laugh she had – not a cackle like mine, but a hearty laugh, the kind that made you know she meant it.

I do remember what her nose looked like – like mine, a little flat but not too flat. Or her eyes – her kind, gentle eyes. And maybe even her hands, with the scars and burn marks from all those years of cooking and baking and giving in to that phase in my life when I thought baking salt-clay sculptures was cool.

I remember the clothes she wore – willowy skirts, dainty tops, bags that were pretty but could handle all her things, even my little brother’s occasional action figure. She also went through a boots phase. I thought then, and I still think now, that was awfully cool for a woman in her 40s living in Butuan.

I remember some of the things she told me: about faith, life, love, and patience.

Oh, her patience. It was the kind that still let her smile through ovarian cancer, a husband on the edge of a breakdown, a 6-year-old son who did not talk a lot, and a pre-teen who did not make things easier.

It was the patience of a woman who told me that it was going to be okay, and that it was time to let go,  all while cancer was taking over her body, when even Valium was of no help.

I remember running around our village under torrential rain, after what was supposed to be a quick trip to deliver some of her cakes. I remember her cakes that were the thing of legend – the smell of cinnamon, dried fruit, and rum that would envelop the house around this time of the year because it was time to bake batch after batch of fruitcake. Edible fruitcake, mind you.

Forgetting becomes a pain when you realize you’ve forgotten some of the things that made her who she was, who she is, or who she’ll always be.

But forgetting also comes in handy when you want to keep on living.

You move forward, sometimes backward, oftentimes sideward, but you always bring with you the places you’ve been, the faces you’ve seen, and the things you’ve somehow forgotten.

The past is a place that is nice to visit, lovely to linger in, but it’s also a place you cannot stay in, for obvious reasons. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a place and time that has long gone and will never come back.

Forgetting is a funny and fickle little friend.

I cling to the memories I have left, although I’m not sure if I will never forget. Years from now, when I’m asked about Beth Cupin, I’ll probably say: she was kind, loving, patient, and wore kick-ass boots. – Rappler.com

Man in the sand image via Shutterstock