Forgetting. It's been my biggest fear since before I can remember. That at least I can remember. I'll share my first memory to explain, then flash forward to explore that fear grown up.

The smile down the warm sidewalk was gone. No, he was more than a smile, he was a little boy. No, more that that, he was my first friend. I remembered the way his smile lit his chubby cheeks and crinkled the corners of his eyes as he laughed. I recalled the summer sun as it glistened in his dark curly hair. But then when I was two he moved away, so I held tight to the memory, a cherished talisman to keep the sadness and worry at bay. As long as I didn't forget him, he was not truly gone. He was still with me in that he had changed me and I would not forget, as long as I held on that part of me was not truly gone.

But if I'm honest, I cannot recall all the detail I just recounted. The background was the first to go. The summer sun and the warm sidewalk are just fictions that fit better with my memory than any other, the background was the first to go. But I remembered him and held tight to that talisman of memory. My unease grew as the memory unraveled, I could no longer picture him, just his smiling face. The dark curls are something I pieced together years later. Then to my terror more came undone and I could only recall his smile and the crinkles by his laughing eyes. Panicked now I grasped tighter still and held onto just his smile. Now years later I cannot recall even that, just the memory of my horror at forgetting him, for forgetting a part of myself.

The failure of memory has been a fear ever since, the way reremembering distorts the real, but it didn't hit home hard until I was just over thirty. That's when my sister committed suicide. I will never see her again. Though four years on now I still remember her. I can still bring her face to mind. I can still hear her singing happy birthday to me on the phone. But those aren't as clear as they used to be. The real details are growing fuzzy. I remember the pictures I can still see clearer than my memory, and slowly those are taking over that which I once had. Again, I am terrified on a scale I could not imagine before. I lost my sister, my only sibling. I am losing her even now year on year.

So that is my biggest fear, forgetting. Losing myself one day at a time. Losing her again through that inevitable march of time.