Flash Bulb Memory

We all have a few; some event in our lives that pop up now and then and we can remember every detail. One of my first was in second grade watching a convoy of Nike and Hawk missiles driving north as I played dodgeball in the school yard; the Cuban Missile Crises had just begun. The next was JFK’s  assassination.

I just came home from an amazing weekend at a retreat for writers, put on by writers who love writing. The first law of writing is don’t use the same word too many times when you’re writing about writing.
I had a chance to read my story of a girl who committed suicide on Christmas Eve. It was difficult to read even though it happened close to thirty years ago. That girl’s death was a flash bulb memory for me.
One of the speakers mentioned that he takes notes so that he can remember the details of what he sees and feels so that when he finally sits down to write, he can remember them. Sometimes you need those notes and other times you don’t.

In 1990 I looked at a man through the sights of my 45 and squeezed the trigger, not once but twice. I didn’t pull the trigger; I squeezed it like we are trained to. I know it because I can remember every second, every minute from the time I saw him with a gun until my supervisor sent me home.
That night many of my friends asked, “What happened?”
My answer was short. “I don’t remember anything but seeing the gun and hearing a shot.”

And that was it. I remembered lots of the generic things; the car chase, the accident and seeing the two guys lying on the front seat, but the serious details refused to let me see them.
I got home exhausted, the adrenalin crash was hitting me and I couldn’t wait to get out of the uniform and sleep.
I closed my eyes and the movie began. Just like a movie it kept playing all night and I never slept. Each time it played I would see and remember another detail; like the blue emergency lights acting like a strobe-light on my guns rear sights and not being able to see the front sight at all, or the fact that my siren was still blaring just a foot away from my ear.
These movies played for weeks whether I wanted them to or not and to be honest, sometimes I did.

It takes some type of trauma to remember things like this. During one of the sessions at the retreat I closed my eyes and tried to remember what color clothing the woman next to me was wearing, the color of the carpet and the color of the fabric draping the tables.
The fabric on the table was a dark bluish-green. I know because I wrote it down.

It was a great weekend. I met new friends and reunited with old ones and I think I learned a few things along the way.