I
It was a late afternoon during mid-March in Toronto. I remember the grey clouds brought rain-drops, and puddles, and stillness into the world so as to reflect the quiet miseries and mysteries of life. Gloom hung in the stench of the muggy air and clung to the back of my mind. The heavy lake clouds acknowledged our melancholic mortal condition and the curse of suffering we each bore as trespassers in the ailing world. The indifferent pour of rain and the growling roars from above prophesied tragedy. Beauty was melting. Beauty, like the way the golden sun loved the sky, was as brief as perfection and drowned in tempests. Yet beauty was also like the fleeting touch of calm rays, the emerging yellow after misery. I was six years old and did not understand neither misery nor beauty. She was sleeping peacefully on Mom’s lap, Dad beside her, Gabriel and I sitting on the floor. Mom said that her heartbeat did not rhyme with its usual rhythm, and she soon lay as heavy as marble in her lap. Mom was so young. She sent me and Gabriel upstairs to wait, and we watched in the dark as blue and red lights brought us to the windowsill. An ambulance arrived, and I remember the funeral smelling like lilies.
II
I could never understand you. All you could say was ma. The thoughts which you could not speak would rupture into your violent yell, but your hands tried speaking to me a million words: you would put your hand to your mouth as if to blow a kiss, as if to say I love you. I wish you could have seen the smiles on my face. You were rough and free and would rock back and forth in a trance, shattering ice or a glass cup on the living room floor when you were happy. I remember you as biting, vomiting, and moaning. But you were also the clink and clatter of keys which you would jingle and the glow of carols on your radio—you were the scratches on those CDs. You were laughter when Mom read Robert Munch’s picture books, the hums of Silent Night, and the sweetness of cream of wheat, the things which you loved most. You were the familiarity of the green couch and drowsiness. I remember you as soft blankets, pink sweatshirts, and stretchy hair-ties. Your long, black hair was wild against the stillness of your cold white hands. You were syringes, and medication, and wheelchairs—the nurses’ only patient. You were never-ending doctor’s visits and hospital visits, Christmases that brushed against death, the numb headaches and tears of your loved ones. You were youth, and joy, and beauty, and sickness, and misery, and death. You were my confusion.
III
Mom and Dad fled the life where Julia lived for sixteen years and brought me and Gabriel to America, this continental haven where families could be reborn. Time kept me away from the places of the past, and the vividness of Julia’s memory rusted inside me. I would begin to forget her. But her presence would never leave me. At the bottom of the eighth inning of my first Red Sox game, the happy crowd’s chant bum bum bum resurrected Julia: the memory of a happy little girl on her father’s lap singing Sweet Caroline appeared in my mind and wet my eyes. This pleasant twinge of Julia’s memory in my heart comforted me, though. Today when I feel this strange tickle and think about Julia’s story, I remember that I have witnessed a miracle. In her short life, Julia illuminated beauty and defied the weary miseries of the world. As a proud brother, I am compelled to follow this light and to seek beauty in the world.
Sole Magazine