Remembering Memories

In my grief, there was a point where things seemed to be improving day over day—about 90 days after the loss of our son.

The terrible sadness no longer occupied every moment. It would come and go. You still miss your person. The pain is still sharp, but it isn’t with you every second. You even find yourself laughing a little. Smiling without trying.

You can almost feel the grief easing, and if you’re lucky, the memories still flow easily—vivid, unfiltered.

But then one day, you have a memory.

Or do you?

Are you remembering the actual moment? Or just the memory of it?

That’s when the ground starts to shift. You feel like you’re backsliding. You question everything. What’s real? What’s just a worn-out loop?

I know I’ll never forget my boy. And yeah, clearly I love talking about him. And any good shrink would tell you this is an attempt to slow down the fading.

But the moments we shared feel foggier. More distant by the day.

Did he really say “Mr. Bootybutt” all the time? What about “Woo Hoo”?

Was it his two-year-old voice I’m hearing, or his four-year-old one?

What did he really think? What did he love? Did he really say it like that?

At what point does a memory stop being the original, and start becoming something else?

You question them all.

And the grief resets. Fresh again.

So you grasp at remembering.

(And then you binge old videos for two hours and cry.)

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Shea Thomas Callanan, our boy, passed away on October 12th unexpectedly. His epilepsy did not define his life, nor will it define his memory. If you feel inclined, please support Shea’s Play Fund which will be used to make play more accessible wherever it is needed most.