Dear Mary:
I’ve decided to finally respond to your emails not because I remember you, but because I don’t. When you first contacted me after my name and face appeared in the media following the plane crash, I had no recall of you. After you sent a second email with your photo attached posing in front of Agora in Grant Park—a photo you claimed I took—I still had no recollection of you. I assumed you were like many others who were contacting me, a grifter or gaslighter trying to scam money or gain favor or attention.
I no longer believe you’re that type of person. You haven’t asked anything of me except an invitation to reconnect, and I realize there is a chance I have forgotten that I once knew you.
As you discovered from the media reports, I suffered from a dissociative fugue state following the plane crash, temporarily forgetting my identity and wandering off as if I were someone else living an entirely different life. It’s difficult for me to accept this happened, and even more difficult to accept it might have happened to me years ago in relation to you.
It’s true that early in my career I occasionally traveled to Chicago on business. I have visited Grant Park and seen the Agora sculpture as depicted in the background of the photo you sent. But I don’t remember you. I don’t remember pulling you back to the curb when you mistakenly stepped out into oncoming traffic, as you claimed is how we met. And what happened after that? How long were we together? How did we end up in Grant Park? Maybe if you fill in more details I will remember, because I am beginning to recall some events after the plane crash during the days my mental state was compromised.
But there might be a simpler, more rational explanation: we all remember people who don’t remember us, and the reverse is true as well. Someone we met once or a few times did or said something so memorable to us yet it meant little or nothing to them. This must happen all the time. We never know what permanent impression we might make on each other, without being aware of it.
The other possibility is that we did meet, and for one reason or another, I was in a dissociative state at the time, in what could be a recurring disorder for me. I write to you on the eve of embarking on a cross-country trip to California where I plan to work with a physician and researcher who is an expert in dissociative cases.
In any event, I wanted to respond to your emails, since you seem quite sure we share a brief history.
My best,
Robert Besch
