Apparently, memories work like this: every time you remember something, you actually remember the last time you remembered it. It’s like taking a copy of a copy. Thus every time you re-remember you lose some details until eventually, it becomes vague. In psychology, this technique is sometimes used to effectively alter traumas and disturbing memories. But in daily lives, it’s just the waves cleaning the sand.

The best you can do to preserve something is never think about it, so it seems. Until the memories become too strong to run away from. Like a tidal wave you have been swimming from for years, finally overtakes you. When the waves come crashing down there is no more staying afloat, no more gasping for air. This all led me to write you this.

I want to start with a clear memory, something tangible that can resist the vagueness of a fleeting mind. There is a photograph that I can use to explain my story in its simplest and purest form.

The photo is taken back in 87 when I was three years old. The photo is dull and gloomy, partly its the weather, partly the quality of the devices back then. It shows me sitting on a swing, halfway up with my legs stretched towards the grey sky. There is a girl next to me who must have been around sixteen sitting casually. She wore a blue skirt and a dark t-shirt.

The photograph, however, gained significance almost 15 years later. When I wish to start recounting my story that tangible omen had been sitting in a cupboard, waiting to be found like the thread of a story waiting to be unravelled.

My mother and I were cleaning out the living room. Cleaning a room is a bit like cleaning your head, I always thought. You remove all the thoughts until you stay with white nothingness. There were cardboard boxes all over the floor which we filled with stuff. Rooms cluster with stuff like heads with pointless thoughts. I was storing stone statuettes of little gnomes when my mother gasped. I turned around, she walked across the room towards me. In her hand is the old photograph. Back then I had never seen it before, and I didn't know yet how it would haunt my mind for months to come. But the look on her face, her eyes big and white and the paleness of her hollow cheeks revealed it all.

“Do you remember when I took this photograph?” she said. I shook my head as I pushed a box away and got up. “It was somewhere in November, we went out for a walk and stopped at the playground.”

“I can’t remember the playground,” I said. “Where is it?”

“It would surprise me if you did, you were just a kid. They destroyed it pretty soon after the photograph was taken. Now it’s a commune swimming pool”

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We sat down next to each other on the old couch and stared at the glossy photo in her hand. There was me and a young girl sitting on a swing. The sand underneath the rubber seats was torn open from all the kids' shoes stopping their momentum against the ground. There were flowers at the legs of the swing and plastic wrappings.

“When we went to the playground, you always were some kind of ecstatic. You yelled and ran around. This was only natural for kids to do it, so I thought. But this photograph made me change my mind.”

“How so? I don’t understand, mom.” It seemed only normal kid behaviour. But my interest was sparked. I was always ready to look at the me of an earlier age. Like mountains missing the snow in summer.

“I didn’t understand back then. You always seemed at ease there.” She said as her hands clenched in fists, so much I was afraid she would tear the photo in pieces. “You could talk for hours. But you see, there was no one to talk to.”

“I don't understand.”

“That’s what the photograph revealed. Because there was no one there but us.” She waved the picture under my nose, her eyes were teary. “Yet there she was!”

I was dumbfounded. “Of course not!” I said. You must have forgotten about her or something. By the time the photo was developed, you must have forgotten she was there.” I wondered if it was a joke, but she never was much of a joker. Especially not these days.

“Because the girl was dead, Barnabas. She hanged herself in the playground.”

“There is a date written on the back of the photograph. -November 1987- That girl died in 81.”

Could I talk to ghosts? I didn’t remember a single weird encounter. I was as plain as bread if anything. “Do you remember what I talked about?” I asked my mother. She shook her head. I didn’t dare to ask more of her, so we silently agreed to drop the matter and focus on the things at hand.

We continued to gather stuff and filling up the boxes as Christmas had just ended. We didn’t talk, not even whisper, so when the telephone rang we both looked up startled. Since I was closest, I picked up.

“Hello?”

“Barnabas! Let’s hang today, huh?”

I looked at my mother and shook my head comfortingly. She has stared at me like rabbits in a headlight. “Can’t today, Sam. We’re busy.”

“You always say no, man. How long are you going to hole up there? I mean, you haven’t been to school in over three weeks.”

Anger filled my whole body. I would stay there until the end of time if I wanted to. This poisonous anger dazed me, but I couldn’t let it engulf me. With a sigh, I asked; “What about this weekend?”

“Cool, I will come to your house Saturday at six. And no excuses this time.”

“Yeah. See ya.”

“And say hi to your mom for me.”

In fact, I was glad he called. Most of the people drop you like they drop a hot plate without gloves. But Sam wasn’t scared to get burned.