sjsprWriting

I would save my sister’s diary.

I know how much she treasures it, protects it. How much she loves it.

Everything she sees, tastes, and feels – it’s all there. Those are her memories, and for me not to save them would kill me. I wouldn’t want to see her forget them. I wouldn’t want to let them burn away as wisps of red.

I remember having opened it one day when she was out staying with a friend. I’d always see her writing in it, a faint smile curling up her plump cheeks as she took that pen and wrote, remembered, wrote, remembered. I thought it was so silly and infantile. Until that day I decided to read it.

Everything was so detailed, as if she couldn’t bear to leave anything out. She’d write simple sentences like, “Today was a good day. I went to the beach. It was sunny. Really hot. I still had fun, though.” I couldn’t help but wear the same smile she had on while she’d write. Reading her diary made me feel what she did. I smelled the scent of that beach she had been in. I saw the bead of sweat crawling down her arm as she tanned. All of that from such simplicity.

I passed the page and saw a picture of us as children. I was hugging her, almost falling. She had the widest grin on her face as she struggled to pick me up. She doodled an arrow next to it and wrote “Cia and me.”

That’s when it kicked in that she had to remind herself of how her life had been. Otherwise, her memories would fade away. And, I knew then the magnitude that those simple sentences carried with them. They triggered in me a memory I hadn’t lived. For sure, they did the same for her.

That’s why I’d save it. To let those moments burn away would be unforgivable.