Memories in ether

I don't know whose fault it is: ours, everybody's? What I do know is what we all wonder: when will it be over? When can we go back to that, to the place of our childhood, to some semblance of normalcy?

I remember trying to remember. It was all I did after a certain point. I guess I must've known. 

And I think it worked to some degree: dreams are filled with painstaking reenactments and visitations, forcing my brain to be as accurate as possible with every last detail it can still evoke. Like: that building comes after this hill. That hallway leads to this room, and the elevator looks like this, and the iron fence has a heart shape wrought into it, or maybe that was the neighbor's, and I always wished it was ours. The trees shook this way, and the light struck the corridor of the shoddy mall from this angle only at certain hours. These are the streets I once knew. This is the home I lost.

My brother always says I'm too hung up on the past, and I know that not only is that true, but I'm also obsessed with the limitations of the future. The people I'll never see again, the places irreversibly changed and impossible to recreate in my dreams. Sometimes I wonder if it's okay that grandma is losing her mind; at least it saves her from thinking about these things, from taking in the sadness all around her, from contemplating the possibilities that are not possibilities for her anymore, and from caring that once these memories are irrevocably lost they will never haunt you again, not even in dreams.