Flash Friday #71 'Memoir'
Original flash fiction: Mortality brings clarity...
Welcome to ‘Flash Friday’ where every week I share some of my original flash fiction.
This week’s story was inspired by the writing prompt: ‘The memory we used to share is no longer coherent…’
With this week’s piece, I have played about with first and third person, with the protagonist writing in his memoir. So much of story-telling is about from whose perspective you are reading, or experiencing, it from. And even ordinary lives carry extraordinary stories within them.
Here, we see an old man suddenly faced with his own mortality, seized with the desire to tell his own story, to not be forgotten. So much of our lives is lost when we die, no one is immune from it. For some of us, we want to share the ‘real’ us and to leave something behind to mark our existence. For others, we prefer to slip quietly away and keep our secrets. What would you prefer?
I hope you enjoy reading this one, and please leave a ‘like’ or a comment below if you’d like to share your thoughts - I’d love to hear what you think.
“The memories we used to share are no longer coherent. The once crisp and distinct images now seem muddled and vague: all the detail of her mannerisms and looks, gone. When we no longer remember someone’s face, or recall their voice, can we really still claim to love them?”
Tim stopped typing and rested his elbows on the table in front of him, massaging his tired eyes with his fingertips. Writing a memoir was always going to be a huge undertaking, but writing about her was almost impossible. The struggle between remaining true to himself and his feelings, whilst respecting the sensitivities of his future readers, most of whom would be family, was tough. But since the diagnosis, he had felt compelled to recall and record as much as he could. Time was running out for him, but selfishly he wanted immortality. And so he wrote.
“Perhaps it is the memory of what might have been, that we actually love. The unfulfilled dream; the one who slipped through our fingers. And perhaps what we do remember bears little resemblance to what actually was. All I can say, is that the thought of her has stayed with me my entire life. Through marriages and divorces, through births and deaths, and through happiness and sadness, always she has haunted my mind.”
With shaking hands he typed: “Her name was Ellen.”
A single tear found a groove in his cheek to flow down. Pausing once more, Tim dabbed at his watering eyes with a clean hanky, and blew his nose loudly. The cup of coffee beside him was long-cold, but he took a sip anyway, wincing at its unpleasant bitterness. Smoothing the few white hairs left on top of his head, he cleared his throat, determined to finish the paragraph before his daughter called him for dinner.
“She left me through a misunderstanding, but it was my pride which prevented us from resolving things. I never saw her again. Take note, dear reader, and learn from my mistake: when you find ‘the one’, hold onto them fast. Do not allow vanity or foolishness to dictate your future path.”
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