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Dan stared down at the photo albums laid out in front of him. He hadn’t realized they had that many – how many moments had been worth photographing, then? Clearly more than he’d thought. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?
It took some leafing through to decide that it was not, entirely, a good sign. Damn. He set them down and leaned back in his chair, turning his eyes to the ceiling.
How the hell was he supposed to do this?
Keep it light at first, that’s best, the doctor had told him. Sure. Simple enough. But what was light? Better times by their standards, by normal people’s? It was hard to even know what the latter would be, after all these years. Or- some sort of balance, maybe, work in the bad memories alongside the good, change the ratio as they go, start at…
He had no idea.
Grabbed a random album, flipped to a random picture. All of them standing on a dock by a lake, Diana the only one truly smiling. You wouldn’t notice the empty space if you didn’t know it was there: it was on the far end, to Di’s right, unremarkable to anyone except them and the person they’d asked to take the picture for them. Anyone except those who’d heard Diana making sure they “get my son in the photo”.
Well. That was probably out.
Definitely out, he decided, for now. Dan didn’t want to bring in him just yet, especially not when Diana couldn’t even remember her living child. He thought back to a few days ago, when they’d first realized how much memory Di had lost, him grasping at any and all moments that seemed memorable. That day our child was born, he’d tried, and then worried about what that might dredge up: Our baby girl’s first cry! He wondered if either of them had noticed his panic. Nat probably had. She was perceptive, and had far too much practice identifying that particular problem.
He wondered if he should bring his daughter in to give her opinions on the process, but dismissed the idea: she’d holed herself up in her room as much as possible since Diana had come back from the hospital. It was a little strange, considering how little she’d been in the house before then, but a relief for that same reason. As long as Natalie and Diana were both safe in the house, that was one less thing to worry about.
Although… last time Di was in this house, it turned out she hadn’t been safe at all.
No. She was better now. They were better. It was going to be fine.
More than fine, even, if Dan could figure out how to make it so. And he could. He would. He had to.
He drew in a long breath and started sorting through the photos.
Any of the most obvious bad moments were set aside. Same for ones with obvious space for her hallucinations. As for the ones Dan kept, he tried to find as many of Natalie as possible, both large and small moments: he wasn’t sure exactly what had been going on with her lately, but it clearly wasn’t good, and maybe being able to be really seen by her mother would help with that. He found a box with pictures of flowers into it to put the photos he didn’t want to share into: part of him noted the irony, considering he was definitely going to be presenting their past through rose-tinted glasses, but what other way was there? What other way that could fix things, drag them back from the ever-present cliff’s edge of before instead of just letting them stand there until-
No. Not until anything. That wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be an option. So, glasses it was.
He found himself thinking of the flowers growing outside their house, far less nice to look at than the ones on the box. He and Diana had both vaguely liked the idea of a garden, but not enough to actually put in the effort to maintain one, so their scattered attempts were left to struggle on their own among lots of weeds. There were these few extremely determined flowers with unimpressive white blooms that they’d often plucked a couple of to bring to the other, becoming a sort of inside joke over the years. Dan couldn’t remember which one of them had started it, or why, and he didn’t know if Diana did either: just that she would always receive or present them with the same little smirk. Until she hadn’t. He’d offered her some the night before she tried… that night, hoping to lift her spirits a little before clearing out the old boxes, and she’d just stared down at them, almost unseeing. Now, he realized that she certainly wouldn’t know the source of it all if he finally asked, that the flowers would probably be greeted with a small smile but no glimmer of recognition. He wished he could try, but they hadn’t quite recovered from the winter yet. Maybe they never would, maybe this was the year they’d give up for good along with everything else.
Or. Not everything. Dan wouldn’t give up. He wasn’t sure how. He looked through one of the older albums, found a picture of that halfhearted garden in one of its better times. He’d show her that. See if she could remember, after all.
Sorting, sorting, sorting, for G-d knew how long. Finally, he put the floral box away in the closet and piled the remaining albums into their own containers. They could start looking at them tomorrow.
Hell, he hoped he was doing this right.
This was… he’d never had to deal with something on this scale before. Always been waiting for Diana to start turning to a person who wasn’t there, for another newspaper headline that sent Natalie into hiding out of embarrassment, for his phone to ring with awful news and wondering what might be happening if he wasn’t called. Always ready for them to stumble, because he’d be ready to catch them with open arms.
This wasn’t a stumble. This was free fall. For him as much as his wife or daughter.
He dug a small bag out of his pocket, one he’d thought of as soon as Dr. Madden suggested bringing out mementos. He poured their wedding rings out into his hand and stared at them. They were cheap, impulsive things, but bright and one of his favorite sights in the world. Hers too, he hoped. She had to know those at least, right? Deep down?
Know all this, and find more too. Really, before hadn’t been great. Maybe now they could figure out a new normal? Something more like other people’s, something easier for all of them?
They could make it better than before.
He could make it better.
He had too.