Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena , Antonio, Dolores, and right, my mother Filomena - November 1919

In these last few weeks I have been having a thought that my memory has to be classified.

Because my mother, father and grandmother never lived in Vancouver there is nothing in the city that may have memories of them. There are some exceptions:

When my grandmother, and her three children, my mother, uncle and aunt, left Manila in 1919 (after my grandfather had died at age 30 the year before) to live in the Bronx, they left in a Japanese ship.  They disembarked in a place that my grandmother told me when I was a child, “It had mountains and trees and it was called Van-coooo- ver.” She then added, “We left from a cavernous train station for Montreal.”

Because the train station was the Canadian Pacific Train Station, I often go and imagine my family walking across.

Is that a different memory because it has a physical place? Is my father’s large 30s Argentine flag, folded here in my oficina another example of memory because of an object associated with the person?

In my Kitsilano home, every room, every picture on the wall, is a physical manifestation of my Rosemary. Our two cats are her in a way.

And so I now see memory as being one of physical substance and one of just a remembrance from a past. I can still remember the voices of my father, mother, grandmother and Rosemary. Is that aural memory? How about scent memory? 

My looking into information on memory took me to Google where I put: Jorge Luís Borges, Memoria.

The result was an over-the-top rabbit hole – La Memoria de Shakespeare. This was a book containing a story with that title in 1985. Since almost anything by Borges is now available, all complete, I was able to read the story about a man who has a talent of having the whole memory of William Shakespeare and who is able to bestow the talent to anybody only at the personal loss of it. This he does to a man who becomes the narrator of the story. Within that story I found this:

 My way of life Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf.

I looked up the quote and found this:

This famous quote is from William Shakespeare's play Macbeth and is spoken by Macbeth in Act 5, Scene 3. It is a metaphor for his life, which he feels has withered and lost its meaning, much like a leaf in late autumn. He is weary of life and sees no joy, honor, or love in his future because of his wicked deeds.

While I am not to admit having made wicked deeds I do feel an emptiness that the life I have lead is past me and I am just waiting to make my exit. And this especially so with that quote ending with "the yellow leaf" of the fall I am experiencing right now.