Mckenna Ryan

05.28.16

Anxious re-telling of a memory I cannot remember

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There is one very large hill by my home. As a child, I would beg my dad to speed over the top so my stomach would flip as we descended down the hill. Many years later, my dad and I took part in a charity bike ride for mental health. Biking down this same large hill, I fell – I fell hard. I left the hospital with a traumatic brain injury, fractures on my skull and my face, and absolutely no recollection of what had happened. For many months, the accident, and the hours following, were simply gone.

Until one night, I had a dream.

I dreamt I was dying, and in the moments before my death, I sat down with my dad to have a conversation. In this dream, I berated him with the question, ‘Dad, what happened?’ When I woke up, I wrote out this conversation. I later repeated it back to my father, who turned white as a ghost, and said, “Mckenna, that was almost our exact conversation in the ambulance ride from the accident to the hospital.”

This film confronts the emotional distress and turmoil associated with a partial and fleeting memory of a traumatic accident.

Website: mckennna.com

Instagram: @mckenna

Vimeo: mckennaryan