Rememberance

A short story about unrequited love and happenings of life

Remembrance

By Abubakar S.

 

I sat in my yard under the star speckled sky, soothing darkness oozed out of from everywhere and stars appeared as if hope was sprinkled on the vastness of the gloomy , black sky. I lit a cigarette and idly sipped the hot hibiscus tea I just made out of fresh flowers that I myself plucked from the garden. The hibiscus tree stood at a little distance from me, it looked bright under the moonlight, and the scarlet flowers were in full bloom, so subtly reminding me of someone from years ago, as I gazed at the magenta flowers hanging from the slightly bent branches. It was perhaps an ordinary night. Although the gloominess prevailed so subtly in the air. I smoked the cigarette and exhaled into the obliviousness, a pensive mournfulness surrounded me, I could hear even the unintelligible chirps of cricket, and it was a sort of night I would have wanted to seek meaning, out of even the sweet quirky noise of the insects. It was a failed attempt to run away from my thoughts that spilled from long forgotten memories, of making me aware that even after so many years I couldn’t forget her. I was looking really far, with unanswered questions, at the moon, trying to forget what I didn’t want to remember.

It was a busy evening in the surgical emergency department, somewhat close to midnight, when she looked at me and asked to sit on the counter with her. Momentarily, I stared at her weary eyes trying to shrug it off but the next moment I remember how subtly I was talking to her, oblivious of my surroundings. It was nothing but a few simple exchanges, a sort of verbal enticement amidst the hospital chaos. You know the moments when you’re not so ready to be promptly distracted by what’s going on around you but the dreadful presence of manifested anxiety doesn’t let you be at peace. I looked around and there was never ending influx of patients, a sickening pile of work to do, my body too tired to even respond to the queries. I wanted everyone to vanish from that very moment. The most beautiful moments are not to be deciphered by the conventional standards of judgment, they just happen out of random, on one busy evening, making their long lasting impacts. The only fear one has is the annihilation of the happiness that comes after it, but weren’t those five minutes of conversation enough to carry me through the inconsiderate night?...I leave that to the speculations of the reader but as for me I do, slightly, remember the dwindling monotony of a busy night turning into a melodious appeasement of my sorrows, and the unguarded yet a receptive mind wandering into a faded tired feminine voice.  

You know how life gets unbearable sometimes, the feeling in the pit of your stomach that all of this, the miseries of the broken world, the vanity of the indifference of human life, is fleeting but still it’s hard to ignore. How the world turns over, at times, reminding you of the meaninglessness of it all and how everything falls apart, piece by piece as the unapologetic truths of your life unfold. Only the tangible convictions come to your realizations, and in these uncertain times if someone’s presence helps you cope, cater to the substantially incoherent inflictions of life, that person should be remembered and at least thought of, at times… but how? Her presence was a perceptible dream, a detached reality that made me think. As much as the vivid reflections of any interaction can be exaggerated, I beg to say that it is entirely not my fault to remember her like that.

While writing this, I admit I’m biased, up to acceptable proportions towards the unwanted assumptions one must have reading this but the beauty of life unfolds as you get indifferent to the possibilities of any event. Honestly, if I could tell you how I convinced myself to let go of the fantasies I had all my life, how I spent the winters of my childhood hoping to dissolve into the cold nothingness and appear as the dew drops on the petals of a wilting rose to give it life, to fly away in the bleeding sky and outlive my sorrows in the roaring rain, to get immune to the remembrance of all my lonely endeavors and wipe away all the encrypted lies I told myself along the way. But fantasies aren’t to be let gone , they’re to be cherished the same way as the harsh realities because what difference does it really make if something happens as opposed to something that you really wish for to happen. As the night grew on, and I looked at the tormented white ceiling of the ER, briefly thinking of all the painful conversations and unsightly occurrence it might have absorbed, of all the deaths and the depleting hopes of tired, helpless people it must have witnessed, how tortuous and melancholy is the uneasiness of this epiphany. I wanted to hide as this realization lingered on me and the clarity of chaos enshrouded my peace. I sat down and drank some water. I looked at the clock as it struck eleven. It was still seven more hours to go in the depths of insanity but not even a moment passed, that a patient was rushed in on the stretcher. It was a young female, a case of road traffic accident. The patient was profusely bleeding, her saturation dropping and the pulse really feeble. She was intubated immediately but her heart sounds were inaudible. I pressed a finger to her carotid and immediately called for help to opt for CPR. As the compressions started we had a glimpse of hope. In the abrupt pauses between the compressions, I could look in the eyes of her relatives for all they could pray for was her life, for they weren’t ready to descend into the valley of loss. It was unbearable although it wasn’t the first time I was witnessing a death but that day was different. I couldn’t ignore the inconvenience on the faces of her beloved, a figurative agony, a helpless denial followed by weeping acceptance. And as I wrote sudden cardiac arrest as her cause of death on her final departure certificate, I noticed the gold earrings she was wearing in her ears, how meaningless their existence became, how empty and soundless it all seemed. A few moments ago, what was the ornamental proof of life became a wrinkled, broken, forgotten memory. How utterly sad was the sight of a soul’s departure that I couldn’t bear it, I wiped my watery eyes and was about to sit when I saw her again at a distance, her tired eyes wandering into the abyss, her cashmere sweater, the color of the warm hibiscus tea you sip when you’re too tired to think about the sorrows of the world and when you want your eyes to witness the delicacy of a forgotten memory, yes, the same color as those glorious scarlet flowers you can pluck one night to feed the yearning of your soul. At that moment, all I wanted was to fleet the existence, to surrender and to be entangled in an uninterrupted conversation, vulnerable enough to forget my own self. I looked at her and for a brief moment our eyes crossed and I felt that she was ready to reciprocate what I felt, at least that is what I tell myself, to this day. I waived at her and she smiled back at me. We sat together in the doctor’s office and had tea. She offered me a piece of her chocolate doughnut and talked about God knows what for I was too sleepy to participate in any conversation but I nodded to her gestures. I looked at her in between the pauses I took sipping the tea; it was still four more hours to go for the shift to end. I didn’t realize when she stood up and went outside; I didn’t doze off but couldn’t grasp what was going on around me. I put my head down and closed my eyes. The noise of the busy ER subsided and in a matter of moments, I was not there anymore.

As far as I could see, there was only immensity of golden brown evening sky and green lush trees. The lavender flavored cigar tasted a bit rough as I flipped through my book looking at the shady trees of black locust, the flowers of which were perfect to send with a letter to your loved one. It seemed like one of the spring days as I sat alongside the lake looking at the waves created by slight breeze and at a very reasonable distance I could see her near the wild limbs of apple tree taking the swing from the heavily bent branch looking far away. Even at this distance I could see the loose lock of her hair that always slipped the confines of her ponytail falling across her cheeks, always caressing her skin in a careless manner. What more could you contemplate when you’re not in proximity, even imagination becomes a guess and yet can you notice the lingering scent , the vaguely apparent notion of changing expressions and the variance of her blushing face. All that there is to be imagined must be noted of, taken care of but I felt really far from her. I felt as if I couldn’t move and then I felt something, a gentle brush on my shoulder and some noise and in few seconds I realized that I was still in the ER and a fellow colleague just told me that it’s time to check up on my patient. I got up unwillingly, tired to my core and suddenly remembered that merely the dream I just had was not short of a fantasy and as much as I would want to run away from them , they can always grasp me , in my weakest moments , even in the busiest of my duties. I looked at the time; it was ten past two in the morning.

The night passed, somehow, and as I stepped out to see the dawn. I hadn’t slept in the whole day, as a matter of fact I did doze off for some time and that was probably the highlight of my day. I picked my bag and there she was sitting on the chair outside the doctor’s office. For some reason, even really tired, I sat down for a moment. I asked how she was doing; she seemed tired too, as she nodded in affirmation with an exhausted but effortless smile spread across her cheeks almost affirmative with a slight inquisitive gesture. I would have wanted time to stop right there, for I couldn’t let go of the smile, it imprinted in my mind , partially because I had been deprived of sleep and was nearly hallucinating and her presence was always imaginative to me, sort of a deja vu. With an unwilling sigh, I got up and without saying anything headed out. I wanted to look back, for a brief moment, just for once but I think, even in the slightest of my ideas, I didn’t know it was perhaps an end, to a sort of melancholy beginning.

I wouldn’t say my life was stifling and boring, I had my shares of adventures, from pesky conversations with neighbors to friendly harmless chitchat with people and in all of the aimless existence of society I was playing the role of someone who wasn’t cynical at least not to unhealthy proportions. But the world works in mysterious ways isn’t it? You wake up one morning and something is maliciously planned to upset you. It was a bright sunny morning; I was walking through the muddy side streets of the city, to collect my mail after a light breakfast. I wasn’t feeling really well, a bit somber. There was only one letter and as soon as I picked it up, I had a feeling that something is going to happen. I read the letter and it was my appointment for administrative duties which meant that I will be transferred to a different hospital. It meant nothing to me but before even finishing reading the letter, I had realized that I won’t be seeing her again, at least not anytime soon. The hospital I was now appointed was stationed in the very far end of the city, sort of a lonely and irksome commute. It was not long before I started working at my new workplace. I did write her a letter, you know, but the only thing I couldn’t send along with it was some black locust flowers. I told her that it will be not before a few months that I will be able to see her, and that the little time , nonetheless ten days, I got to spend with her was perhaps the only time I will remember in the nights I’ll spend under the star speckled sky in my yard. You know exaggeration is the key to win hearts, even of the readers when you write a story but every word of that letter was truly what I really felt , at least while writing it, at least in that very weak moment of my life. It is perhaps an act of bravery to accept the vulnerability that comes with succumbing to someone’s emotions, it is not entirely an act of illusory, it is something of value, something that really exists. Still, it is hard to say things that you actually mean, that you want to someone to acknowledge. You want the other person to take whatever meaning that is convenient for them, only if you can say things you actually want, life could be so much easier and with these thoughts I wrote nothing more and nothing less.

Sixteen days and fourteen hours, was the time I had to wait to witness an envelope sent to my name. She finally sent me that letter. I remember I was writing a prescription when the clerk handed me the letter. When I read the name that it was from, I scribbled the remaining medication and asked the clerk to send in my tea. It was time for some break. I opened the window of my office that overlooked a few banana trees on the side of the road, an epitome of solitude for I always sipped my tea looking out the window gazing far away with my eyes locked in a distance, a flock of pigeons always in flight reminding me of the calmness amidst the chaos. Quite often one of them visited me, beautiful white creature with light grey tips on wings and before I could look at it with a gaze of interest, it left my window to fly in the wide blue sky. I always wondered what if , on one lucky day it would come with her letter tied on its legs. That day did not come until today, only that no pigeon was involved. I had her letter in my hands. There was this bold lettering that said her name. I sipped the tea, for a moment I could hear my heart beating, cool breeze swayed my hair as I gently opened it. Before I could read it, I imagined the festivity of that delicate moment when she would have sat on her desk and picked a pen, to put her thoughts, perhaps about me, in this piece of paper. I knew how she would have addressed me before even reading it, how informally formal she was with me, almost as if playing games ,although sometimes it seemed that all of this was just a figment of my imagination. As if the perceived naivety was in fact her trait. Something reminded me of our last night in the ER , that final sunrise, the last cup of tea, as ridiculous as it might seem , a memory could not be more beautiful than that, stepping out unknowingly that it was perhaps the last time in a long time I will get to see her, not looking back one last time seemed like a mistake. And as I opened the envelope I realized that that there was nothing inside, except a red hibiscus flower. I searched the envelope thoroughly, and all I could see was that. I don’t know and precisely to this day I can’t understand what I felt in that very moment, sometimes you sit with someone and not say anything and still feel content. Sometimes all you fear is to be with someone you can’t talk to , or worse, someone you can’t be silent with . That is how I remember her, maybe it took me a lifetime to decipher what that flower in an empty envelope meant, maybe she had nothing to say and that was everything, perhaps in gathering all the despair in seclusion, she was also looking for someone to just be silent with. It was not than that I realized that. I held that flower in my hands for as long as I could before the patients started barging in and I had to put it in one of my poetry books. I can’t recall what I felt, it was mostly nothing as if my thoughts have been violated. Everything depends on our interpretations of the silence around us, even the noise, and as I was trying to forge meaning out of everything, I realized the importance of silence. I got very silent after that, even the patients noticed that. In seven months I was allocated to a small hospital up the valley and that was the first time I planted the hibiscus tree in my garden up the hill side house. It took quite some time for it to grow and then every night of the first week of spring, I made this ritual of sipping the hibiscus tea while gazing at the sky, for that the questions that remain unanswered should be wallowed in, they must be incorporated in the very depths of your soul to seek meaning and remembrance. And as I sip and gaze at the blooming scarlet flowers, none of it seems as beautiful as the flower that she sent me , still dried up in that book that I never dared to open after that day.