Memory Lane

I make the long journey home driving into the night down a highway that has carried me in and out of every significant chapter of my life. “Oh, it’s you again, girl. It’s been a while.”

“It has, indeed.”

“Care for a little reminiscing?”

“Not particularly. But I suppose that was a rhetorical question now, wasn’t it?”

And I can hear the road reply, “They don’t call it Memory Lane for nothing.”

Seventeen years gone by and somehow I still know every subtle curve of the road. Seventeen years gone by.

The scenes of the day flit across my mind’s eye, superimposing themselves on distant memories now stirring from their slumber. The smells, the sounds, the language of the hospital at once anchor and disorient me. I know this place. I just don’t know who I am within it. Steve Masters. I exhale and shake my head. How can it be that I am here again?

“Souls travel together.” I hear my mother’s voice in my head as my eyes turn to the moon, full and bright ahead of me. Oh, how much that moon has seen.

“So, this is part of our karma, that you should be in this hospital? That you should make me come back here to play this out with you?”

I don’t hear a reply.


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