I think that it’s interesting to know that the word memory comes from the same root as the word, mourn. So the inevitable focus of this memoir will be to just that – mourning. But is it not that way with all of us? It is the moments in life that we can’t control – the ones that tear us out of the flawless bubble that we have created around our own lives, the ones that leave us stranded outside of our familiar cocoon, sabotaged by the unknown – that leave the deepest scrape in our being. They are the ones that shape us, the ones that create us – because it is in them that we discovered a part of ourselves that we had not known. They revealed our soul to us – they unmasked our strength, our weaknesses, and our fears. And so, in the unavoidable turn – We write memoirs of them. So that we can look back and perhaps smile, or feel some of the pressure ease away as we glimpse with pride the distance we have come.
***
“Bingo!”
I grimace. Yet another furrowed female jumps ecstatically inside the tent, knocking the unbalanced bench so that it wavers indecisively between falling and regaining balance, then pompously decides it will remain upright. For now. A black apron walks slowly up to her to pass the cash prize into her shaking and expectant hands.
I mutter my best stream of obscene words, but my limited cursing experience of twelve years hinders me vastly.
“I was only one away!” Dylan hisses, as he resets his card.
I stare at my ultimately blank and scattered boxes.
“I think my slate is on strike.”
Sliding the red screens back and forth over the open squares I try to telepathically will it into becoming lucky.
“Just get a different card.”
Dylan’s blasphemy rings in my head as I turn to face his naive and uninformed eyes.
“Just get a different card!?” I hold mine close to my chest, covering its nonexistent ears. “I can’t. If I do that how do you think this card will feel? Lonely and dejected. And then out of spite, it will give its next owner a bingo, and the one after that, and the one after that – all the while watching me, compelling me to burst into a pitiful mess of crying pleas and apologies. So no. No one else will stand by it, so I won’t give up on him.”
He rolls his eyes and mumbles an unsympathetic, ‘shut-up’.
It wasn’t like there was really any motivation to win – we couldn’t get the money since we were part of the crew that helped run it. We weren’t even allowed to stand up in the conventional burst of triumph and fulfilling pride that is the most exciting part of the relatively boring game. It was more for the simple silent satisfaction of knowing that you won. Which was a distant promise that I was fated to never know.
Over the sound of strained and concentrated quiet, Uncle Jeff’s voice rang out over the speakers – a warm echo that hung in the air, and captured the audience with his bold words –
“B – 12.”
This was my last memory of him. Rushing back home from the Niagara Lions Carnival on that Sunday night after hasty goodbyes, unbeknownst to us, we parted for the final time with the man we all love and adore. With my Uncle Jeff.
***
Two days later, I woke to my mother’s voice. My room was dim, the first signs of morning weakly filtering in through the slats in my curtains. She was on the phone, since I heard only her. Her tone is what caused me to sit up on the edge of my bed and stare intently, wide eyed at my closed door. Sleep clouded my senses, but I anxiously fought through the haze, some primal instinct urging me into awareness. I heard her saying ‘no’ repeatedly, and my body became still. I felt coolness flood over me, and now, immobile, I listened harder. Words rushed through the tainted light penetrating under my door, and context threw itself at me, its inescapable truth hounding my acceptance. But I couldn’t accept – I wouldn’t. Not until there was no other choice – not until my back was pressed to a corner and there was no escape. Not until there were no other options and reality was undeniable. But then it came. The slow and soft knocking at my door – my mother’s voice – soothing and broken. Entering in a wash of light, the silhouette spoke the unspeakable.
“Uncle Jeff passed away last night, Dad and I are going down to bring Aunt Jenny back from the cottage, Grammy’s going to come stay here with you and Dylan until we’re back.”
And then the shadow disappeared back into the light and the door shut with a hushed click. The darkness massed together around the corners of the room, and it was many moments until my body unfroze and I slowly sank to my knees on the floor. I bent with my head on the ground, as my hands gripped the rough fibres of the carpet. My stomach was clenched and I forgot how to breathe – I forgot when the last time was that I had. My lungs constricted and my muscles ached from the pressure. Desperately I gasped, but then I forgot how to breathe again. So there I lay, my unblinking eyes taking in the bare wash of green carpet, as the world slowly but surely crushed the air out of my chest.
The wall before me rang with the wailing of my brother and the murmuring choked words of my mom.
But I couldn’t make a sound.
A single tear fell onto my hand, through my clenched eyes.
It didn’t seem real. How could it be real? My room had not changed, the sun still persisted, and I still heard birds through my cracked window. How could the earth continue on as if it had not just lost a central part of what made it great? Why was there not silence, why, was there not thunder – why had nothing changed? Why.
But everything had changed. And so I struggled with my denial.
When my grandmother arrived I greeted her with numbed normalcy. I took her coat, I offered her a drink, and I listened with an empty mind as she spoke of the tragedy. I watched acceptingly as she scrubbed vigorously at our already polished sink, and cared for our already cared for plants. I helped her clean our recently cleaned house as she strived to fill her head with the some-what familiar.
And when my aunt arrived, I soaked in her tears and gave her myself, until her tears were dry and until they came back again.
The weather on our deck was one of the nicest days of the summer yet. The sun shone in jovial warmth, and the breeze blew in playful repose. The sky was blue, and unblemished by grey. And underneath it, my Aunt spoke tales of death and cried tears of resentment and guilt.
She blamed herself – she should have seen the signs. And she blamed him for what he had caused.
It was the night before at the cottage. They had been at the table when he first noticed a numbness in his arm. He shrugged it off. My aunt, concerned but willing to let the matter rest for now, let it go. He had something against going to the doctors, and she meant to try to convince him to go when they got back home.
Then it was the middle of the night.
A noise woke my aunt, and she opened her eyes to my uncle at the fridge, reaching for the water. His face was illuminated by the artificial glow when he turned to her, and his eyes were glazed with a feverish light.
“Jeff, what’s wrong?”
“I’m okay, just water, I just need water.”
They went back to sleep.
She woke in the morning and turned to her husband. She faced blank eyes, and a lifeless body.
She never went into much detail about the morning that she found him. But to imagine turning over in bed to find inches in front of you the unresponsive face of the one you love most – the one you have formed your life with and your life around – is an experience I hope to never have to endure.
***
And so it was that three years later, In the privacy of the night and the streetlight pervading into my darkened room, that I let my mind wander for the first time with no restrictions to my uncle. It was the only time since his passing that I had had a full release – tears with no restraint. I spoke to him in the darkness, I cried my regrets, I declared my faults, I begged his forgiveness, and I laid out my love. I believe that he could hear me. And I know that that was the moment in which I was healed.
And so on that night, my mind was opened. My soul was cleansed, and my heart was set free. I began to write. On blank pages with the muted light of outside, I picked up my pen and I wrote his name. I wrote it again, and I repeated it until the ache was gone and the page was filled.
And then I wrote down all that I remembered of him, so that what was already fading would never disappear, and would become a permanent statement of the Uncle that was perfect in my eyes. So that I would never forget.
It was the silence that healed me; for it is there that you can hear. Thought in the silence is where revelations leap and bound.
Memory, comes from the same root as the word, mourn. But this memoir was not only about mourning. It was about meaning. For it is our memories that shape us – it is our memories that create us. It is our memories that give meaning to our lives. If we did not have them, we would be but shells, incapable of growth. But we do. And so we write memoirs.
theskywillfall 