In Search of Lost Time

Everyday life with Chip was filled with joy, love and laughter. We smiled at each other while hauling the trash bins to the curb together (something that became only my task when he was so weak in the last month or so). We were happy unloading the dishwasher, cooking or folding laundry together (I could tell sometimes he suffered physically while doing such tasks, but he did it anyway, and always with a smile on his face). The mundane and the quotidian were reliable, simple pleasures of the life we shared, and, I believe, were part of what kept him embracing life for as long as he did. When others might take the opportunity to complain, criticize or blame, he practiced mindfulness and joyfulness in those moments of living. Now, when I see, taste, feel, smell or hear the objects that were part of the tasks we completed and the life we lived, a memory is triggered and I immediately think of him. And, for these memories, I must thank Marcel Proust.

While taking a French Literature class my sophomore year in college, I came to love the French language even more than I already did (It was a love that developed for some unknown reason when I was in 8th grade). Reading Marcel Proust’s “À la recherche de temps perdu” in French (as a French minor, all of my classes were taught in French) and, in particular, his anecdote about “la madeleine,” solidified my interest in where language comes from in the brain as well as how sensory experiences and memories are linked to language. It would be that French literature class, and that specific reading, that spurred me on at the time to major in Linguistics, with a concentration in psycholinguistics, at Georgetown. I had to know more about the mind/body connection that prompted Proust to write something that resonated so strongly with me. The anecdote, which has changed so many lives since it was written, is one I think of often when I move throughout my days without Chip. Literally translated, “À la recherche de temps perdu” means “In Search of Lost Time,” but it is also translated as “Remembrances of Things Past.” Proust wrote:

“…mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?”

I think of Proust’s remembrances every time I have an involuntary memory about Chip. Smelling his cologne (which I deliberately sprayed on my pillow the other night), tasting the basmati rice last night at dinner with my children (The rice was part of our last dinner together on May 30th), and sipping coffee in the morning (we always said how grateful we were for the new day and each other over coffee) unlock recollections of him. One theme of Proust’s remembrances was that they were unexpected and, of course, mine are to be expected in this time of raw emotion. But, moving forward, I am certain I will have at least one Proustian moment every single day in the years ahead without Chip. In fact, I am certain something on my dying day will unlock a past thought or sensation that includes Chip, his death or how he didn’t want to leave life and those he loved behind.

Up until my last breath, I will embrace those unexpected sensory cues that trigger a memory of him. They will keep me grounded in the love and happiness we shared. They will heal me. The remembrances will push me onward, and will guide me along my journey towards everlasting life, so that I can be reunited with him and God again.