He tried to remember what his mother looked like. There were gaps in his memory. He was telling himself. There were deep gashes of time torn out with so much violence to such a point where it was almost as physical as a broken heart. He cursed at this pain. He despised its meaning of weakness yet he was helpless to its omnipresent grip. It was not like the loss of memory caused by amnesia. Maybe it was. What did it matter? The only thing that mattered was the loss. Or was it the reason of the loss? Was it the time? Or was he now a relic, evidence of the years that had been lost? This loss was not… how should it be put? …it was not the loss which spawned rhetoric’s. Yes, that was it. Or was it? In the end he had to decide. Maybe he didn’t have to? But that would mean that he was weak. But he knew he wasn’t. Not anymore. Not anymore? This memory loss was the kind that spawned parables. This was the loss borne only by those who could see the edges which was significant of the limit of their age, he decided.

Nothing changed. A decision was just a decision and nothing more. It was not a doing word. Certainly didn’t qualify as a verb. Or did it? He wasn’t sure. There was something relatively murky about what it really was. It reminded him of a long forgotten joke. Or was it a riddle? He couldn’t tell. At the time he had heard it, it had been a riddle. That was the thing about youth. Everything had to be a cumbersome question. Now it had metamorphosed into a joke. But what did matter? A joke? A riddled? They were all metonymies of the gaps in his memory. The loss was a testament of his creaking bones. All that remained now was the gist of this not a riddle or not a joke. The decisiveness of age or was it the indecisiveness? He wasn’t so sure. He remembered the gist so well because when he had heard it, it had been a riddle. It was a riddle about two frogs on a log. The riddle had gone thus….

A bird fluttered on to his window sill. It bounced once, then again. It cocked its head to one side as if trying to catch some indistinct sound, then again. And as it had come, unannounced like the birth of a still born, it fluttered silently away. As soon as it was gone something struck in his mind. What colour was the bird? It had been here barely ten seconds ago. Yet when he tried to remember the colour of the bird he couldn’t. Was it grey? It had to be black. Red? Maybe even pink! Does a bird care what colour it is? So what did it matter to him what colour the bird was. Does anyone really care what colour birds are? But it did matter, didn’t it? Maybe the colour of the bird didn’t matter but it mattered that he couldn’t remember the colour of a bird that had been right before him not less than fifteen seconds ago. Or was it ten? These things didn’t matter. Did they? Maybe they once did? But that was when his bones had been oiled by youth. Not anymore at least. He was saying that a lot lately. But why should so many things matter when they really didn’t? Did anyone care what mattered in the mind of the aged and what didn’t?  Nobody really cared what did or didn’t. What mattered was that the aged were judged. They were judged superficially by what the younger ones perceived about them. This was their way. They judged you by the scale of things that didn’t matter. So in the end, it didn’t matter that it did or didn’t. In his case, what mattered to him was that he couldn’t remember what colour the bird was. Like the gaping hole in his memory, another parable, another riddle. He decided. He remembered that riddle so well, the riddle that reminded him that to make a decision didn’t matter. After all it wasn’t a doing word. Or was it?