Anniversary

An empty bowl of ice cream, parts of a saxophone, a highlighter, and a steel bottle filled up with water from my bathroom.

Hello, Internet.
If feels good to, once again, write on your vast walls, to scribble little memories and splatter stories on the cavernous alleyways that are your body.
I came for the truth, but the truth came for me.
I came for the lies, but the lies came for me.
I came for the love, but love can't set you free.
Just me.

The Anniversary is on this day. I remember it. It seems like a dream. It felt like a dream. In some ways, what happened 10-16 was a dream. A very badly written, teary, sadist-masochist dream. It happened here. In reality, but it doesn't feel that way. I want the past to rewrite itself, to re-right itself.
But it can't. Time is a fragile and broken, out-of-touch deity. It never does what you want it to. Even though it travels in a straight line, it still gets knots.
And you can't untie knots.
He took a fall.
He fractured his skull.
He had a concussion.
And then they said would be okay.
[...] (This is where the knot is)

I arrived at four of five o'clock in the afternoon. It was sunny, that dark dismal dreary doldrum damned day. My uncle dropped me off by the emergency entrance of the hospital, and I began my ascent into the ICU grotto. My journey took through a back entrance. I walked like a ghost, or like a man going to a funeral, and like a man [period] I wore a ragged smile on my face, and I held anxiety in my twittering hands. I found the ICU waiting room - a small labyrinth of cubicle walls - and my mother. Needless to say, she was not completely sure of the situation. Other people sat through the walls around us, craddling their heads in SorrowFearAnger. No one could get cell reception. There was light, and a little of it, but not enough.
None of it was enough. Nothing a doctor could say could fix anything. Doctors are trained to give the worst case scenario so that all hope is crushed. And if they are wrong, then no one is hurt. No their fault really - they get crap for being the bearer's of bad news.
The system told us he was going into surgery. Complications. Blood in the brain. Swelling. Demons. Pressure. Brain, surgery.
We waited in the OperationRoom waiting cell. We met someone who had a brain injury. My mom read magazines. A friend of her's (an ER doctor) called all of Jim's family to tell them what had happened. I wrote down the Lord's Prayer. We felt the SorrowFearAnger.

Then Dr.F----- came and broke the tension. With a double sided sword. As I recall -
"IF he makes through the night, there is a SLIM TO NONE CHANCE that he will ever be the same." Dr.F was 6'5", grey haired, and big. Looking down. Those words dropped like a tree.

if a tree falls in a forest...

but we heard it. it was a gut wrenching noise - have you ever heard a tree fall? So many little things snapping and crackling, they come together in a guttural democracy of cacophony - each little snap is so silent, yet one thousand of them together is enough to deafen the ears of the mighty and destroy the minds of the weak.

some would say we were deafened.

but,
never -
defeated.

the ride home that night was
silence.

My uncle followed us home, and in case my mother had to steal back to the hellspital in the darkness of the night, he would be there to help my brother and I get ready for the day.

There was a phone call that night.

And just like, when you search hard enough to find light in an abyss, just like when you strive to hear mellifluous music in the melancholy melody of life, we felt hope that night.

Simply, a light in the shape of a hand - the four fingers curled peculiarly into the palm, the thumb stretched towards the heaven - a simple, kinetic, universal, godly, loving, symbol. Maybe that's all I needed. That night, my father, after suffering a skull fracture, a concussion, swelling in the brain, and perhaps irreversible damage to the brain stem and maybe even more things that we couldn't even yet comprehend, that father, simply said to us "yes."

I still don't know what it means.

I do not struggle with Adversity - Adversity struggles with me!

I do not bow down to Calamity - I show myself before and Calamity falls on its bloody, broken knees.

And while sometimes I feel that I do not deserve tragedy and strife;

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me."

Psalm 23:4

I hope I don't appear evangelical; I hope not to convert anyone.
I am just a boy walking. and walking. and walking.

Amen,
Sholom,
Sal am,
Peace,

Cameron