Day 6 - 9/28/19 Daily Writing Prompt: “What I won’t remember” Assignment: Inspiration is "Bullet In The Brain," by Tobias Wolff (https://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_27/section_1/artc2A.html) Once you've finished reading, I want you to imagine that you're the person who was just held up at that bank. You just got shot. What don't you think about? What is your last memory? Following Wolff's example, be as concrete and vivid as you can. Give us images, and sensory detail. Show us the final scene that your mind conjures up in its last moments on earth.
As the bullet passed through her brain, Amanda did not remember any of the things she thought she would. And she had engaged in this thought experiment often, in line at the grocery store, waiting while her car was smogged, or laying awake at night in bed. It was a common game for her to imagine which of her seminal and consequential life memories would bubble up in that moment when her life “flashed before her eyes.”
Now that the moment of her death had arrived, with a literal bang, Amanda did not think of any of those life moments she had rehearsed. She did not remember her first love, Jimmy, or the way it had felt to fall in love for the first time, when she was too young and naive to be afraid of the inherent vulnerability it takes to love and be loved in return. Nor did she remember how shockingly painful it was to have her heart broken for the first time, the gnawing ache in her chest that she harbored for months on end.
She didn’t remember the first time she rode her bike on her own, the streamers on her pink schwinn flapping in the wind while her dad hooted and hollered in pride behind her. She didn’t remember peering into her baby brother’s bassinet for the first time, turning to her mother and exclaiming, “You have to be very careful, you know, he’s very little!”
This is what she remembered. Her cheeks prickling, red from the cold. A field of white. Her small frame crouching down, constricted by her winter layers, hat, snow pants, her mittens hanging down to the ground, held in place by yarn. Gazing in wonder at each individual snowflake as it landed on the mille-feuille. One snowflake, joining a thousand layers of other snowflakes. Each one unique, but indistinguishable in the crowd.