Flashes of Time

by Beau Burriola


I was walking by the window of one of those specialty stores with food from all over the world when I saw a bright blue and red package of Arnott's Tim Tams sitting in the window. I froze on the sidewalk. Nick used to love those things, to cut a little hole in the cookie and drink his coffee through it, a two hundred pound muscle man with a chocolate mustache. I hadn't seen those cookies in maybe eight or nine years.

Staring through that store window, eight years of faded memories gave way to a flash flood of vivid remembering; of his loud, guttural laugh, of cold dinners on the balcony just to say we made use of the balcony, of skiing down a mountain in below forty degree weather, of the misunderstandings, of the words you can't take back, of the frayed end of "us", hanging like a loose thread in time.

In that moment, all the years of being over him came rushing back, yanking me from the present and pulling me through all the memories in my head I thought I'd let go of, before plopping me right back down in front of that store window, in a time and place far, far away. I wonder how he's doing. I wonder where time has gone. I wonder how you can feel so close to a person one moment, have them be so much a part of your life, and then bam - you're back to shopping for waking up alone, a few years passing by before you even think of them again.

How strange love is.

"It'll be like that year when your Army friend came," Mom said, talking about this year's summer family barbeque plans. For a moment, I didn't at all remember who she was talking about - my Army years are so far back - but when it came to me, it hit hard. Martin.

Holding the phone and staring out the window, twelve years of faded memories gave way to a flash flood of vivid remembering; of the nights sneaking out of our bay and onto the base golf course just to sit next to one another talking, of mixing our uniform pants up one morning and showing up in formation with my pants too big and his too long, of hours spent staring at one another across a sea of soldiers, of the wrenching ending of "us", pieces scattered like dust through time.

In a second, all the years of being over him came rushing back, yanking me from my adult life and pulling through all the huge emotions in my heart I thought I'd buried long ago, before throwing me back to my present existence. I wonder how he's doing. I wonder where time has gone. I wonder how you can feel so much a part of someone else one minute – inseparable – and then you can't even remember who they were.

How strange love is.

It seems like when you finally get over someone, you never really get over someone. Maybe the inevitable consequence of loving someone so deeply is feeling deep little pangs of hurt or regret scattered throughout your whole life when faced with a familiar smell or sight or sound or feeling. Maybe those people are part of us and we can still feel it when they are not there.

Or maybe, when you take away the excuses, these little flashes of time are simply our own reminder of how we've lived our lives, how we've hurt other people, of the stupid things we did and said, and how we view ourselves with the clarity of time.

And maybe, just maybe, we eventually grow up and do it right, and the memories won't feel so bad.

"though love be a day and life be nothing, it shall not stop kissing." ~e.e. cummings