Mourning

Author's Note: This essay will eventually become a part of a memoir that is currently in the works

Death and dying have never been a real concern in my life. Up till now, I’ve been lucky enough to not have any people close to me die or even come close to death. As a young boy, I really didn’t know what it meant, but I could see what kind of devastation it can cause.

My paternal grandmother died when I was only in third grade. It was the summer of ’86 and school had just gotten out. Like every other St. Louis summer, the temperature was well into the triple digits while the humidity clung to you like a second skin. The fact that our air conditioner conked out at the beginning of the week didn’t help either. In a vain attempt to combat the heat, we opened all the windows in the house hoping to catch a stray breeze to cool our sticky bodies. Luckily, the basement of our ranch home was furnished with a bedroom and a bath allowing us comfortable refuge while we slept. We all stayed in that one room together. My parents would share the twin-sized bed while I spread a sleeping bag on the floor. It wasn’t the most comfortable of arrangements, but it beat being cooked alive upstairs.

One morning I awoke to the sounds of shuffling upstairs. The first rays of the rising sun had just begun to creep its way through the small basement window, so I could tell that it was still very early. It was a Saturday and my parents didn’t have to work so I expected them to still be in bed. My dad had worked the late shift at the laboratory all week long, and I knew that he was looking forward to sleeping that day. I sat up to check only to find the unmade bed and their bedroom alarm clock flashing the time: 6:30am.

Again I could hear the shuffling upstairs, followed by the muffled sound of voices. I contemplated going back to sleep again figuring that my parents had just gotten up early to watch the sun rise. They often tried to get me to go with them, but I was lazy and always chose to sleep those extra two hours until they prepared breakfast. Besides, it always made me feel uncomfortable when I watched them kiss, cuddle, and do all the other disgusting lovey dovey stuff. However, this time, my curiosity got the better me as I put on my slippers and quietly made my way up the stairs.

I could barely make out my dad’s voice as I neared the top of the landing. He spoke in Tagalog which meant he was either speaking to my mom or one of our relatives. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I could definitely tell that he was upset. Whenever my dad got upset his voice got really high and squeaky. It I something really bad because he had begun to sound like Mickey Mouse when I finally got to the reached the top of the landing. There were my parents, sitting on the floor, cradled in each other’s arms. My mother had her face buried into my father’s chest while she wept uncontrollably.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.

My father said nothing. He just set the phone receiver on the ground and took my hand. I looked into his dark brown eyes and saw the tears pooling there. They wanted to come out. They wanted to pour out and stream down his cheeks, but he would allow no such thing. He just curled me into his arm and held me tight there for a long while. I don’t remember what happened the rest of that day. I wanted to ask him what was the matter, but he just looked so sad. I didn’t want to get him more upset so I decided to play it safe and keep my mouth shut.

Later that night he finally explained to me that grandma had died. A stroke had taken her during the night. There was nothing anybody could have done. As he told me this I could see the tears begin to emerge again. It is always an uncomfortable thing to watch ones father cry. Especially mine. He always made it a point not to lose his cool in front of me. I guess he didn’t want to set a bad example for his son. It’s a damn shame, too. I can still see the same tears well up in his eyes whenever he talks about grandma. Those are fifteen-year-old tears trapped in my father’s eyes. They can’t stay in there forever.

* * *

“Distant Window”
I turn on the TV at three
Monday morning.

It’s A&E, a documentary
on the 60’s—the age of love.

Woodstock.

As Jimi wails on his guitar, the crowd surges;
moving to the singular beat of
harmony, peace, and love.

“Make love not war,” exclaims one hippie
as he thinks of the boy he will never know,

rotting and stinking
in the foreign jungle heat.

* * *

I turn off the TV and sigh,
thinking of the girl I will never know

bloody and broken
at the bottom of my stairwell.

There is no love here

only a purple haze that floats
out a distant dorm window.

I wrote this poem during the late night hours of March 29, 1998. It was my junior year at Knox College and we had just gotten back from our spring break. That weekend, a few friends of mine had decided to celebrate our return with a night of movies and drinking. We had just finished watching Scream when we stumbled into the suite to see the ambulance’s flashing lights as it rolled across the grass toward the student union.

“What do you think happened?” Steph asked.

“Probably some dumb jock,” I joked, “He must have drank too much.”

We sat there for a good ten minutes watching the flashing lights throb through the windows, making all kinds of jokes about getting drunk and the intellectual short comings of some of our athletes. I remember leaving the suite feeling really good. It was spring term, I was reunited with my friends, and I was looking forward to it all. Then something happened.

It turned out that ambulance wasn’t for a drunken frat boy at all. Early that morning a young student named Andrea was found beaten at the bottom of the stairwell leading into the Seymour Union’s mailroom. I never knew her, only in passing really. With a student body as small as Knox’s (about twelve hundred students), it’s very hard not to see everybody at least once. I saw her at a couple of Intervaristy Christian Fellowship meetings, probably even struck up a friendly conversation with her at one time. I don’t remember what we talked about, but it probably wasn’t anything important. Casual conversation rarely is. To me, she was just another person on campus to smile and nod at as we passed each other. It’s a shame that I didn’t get to know her under better circumstances.

The first time I actually heard of her death was the next morning at Church. It should have been a Sunday like any other. Kory, a suite mate of mine, awakened me with his frantic banging on my door. As always, I had slept through my alarm and was running fifteen minutes late. By the time our van had pulled into the parking lot of Bethel Baptist, I was still pulling on my tie. We all sat in a long pew and waited silently for the pastor to begin.

“Friends,” Pastor Kirk began, “Before we start, I would like to say a quick prayer for the Knox student who was murdered last night, her family, and all the members of the Knox community. . .”

I did not hear the rest. I turned and looked at my friends. I can only imagine that their expressions matched mine—an open-mouthed look of shock and disbelief. Back on campus, the dull roar of Sunday brunch was muted. We ate in near silence, but we knew what we were all thinking.
“Who died?”
“Who did it?”
“When did it happen?”
“Why?”

All these question were asked in silence, passed between short glances and long sighs. None of us wanted to believe. Even when the chief of police actually spoke her name and detailed the investigation, it still didn’t seem real. It couldn’t have been real. I remember thinking that this shit only happens somewhere else, and I kept on thinking that until I saw the report on the evening news. There is nothing more sobering than seeing the place you live on with the caption “Murder” underneath it on the ten o’ clock news. That was my confirmation. This was happening for real and right where I lived. Sleep that night did not come easy.

I must have tried everything to fall asleep, from the classic warm milk to a double shot of sake our Japanese exchange student offered as condolences. But nothing would calm my nerves or quiet the questions in my head. Why did this have to happen to here? How could it have been another student? What would have happened it had been one of my close friends? I ran the gambit of all the hard questions one shouldn’t think about at 3:00 in the morning. By 4:30 my eyes finally gave out and I was able to eke out a mere four hours of sleep before I had to get to class.

The next afternoon, I called my parents to tell them what had happened. My mother answered the phone and, like any good mother it only took her a few seconds to figure out something was wrong.

“Chi, nah-mahn (Al, honey),” she said, “What is the matter?” My mother never did waste time when she thought I was in trouble.

“Mom, something terrible has happened.” I swallowed hard.

“What is it?”
I tried to answer, but it choked on the way up. For some reason now, the words were too painful to form. I kept on trying to tell myself that I shouldn’t feel this way. She just went to the same school that I did. I didn’t know her that well. I shouldn’t need to cry. I don’t need to cry. Instantly, I thought of my father sitting on the floor of our old house fighting the tears he needed to shed that day. I realized I never cried for my grandmother when she died. I didn’t know her either. I only knew her from the pictures my parents took when we visited her in the Philippines when I was three. But she was family, I was supposed to get choked up over her and not some person I just barely met. I didn’t know either of them. Why should I cry for either of them? I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I could feel the moisture begin to well up behind my eyelids. That day I found the tears for the both of them.

Realistically, her death shouldn’t have mattered to me. I know that sounds cold, but one can’t grieve for everyone that dies. I wasn’t her friend; she wasn’t mine. I’m sure that if I had read about it in the paper back home, I would have glossed right over it. I could have easily shook my head, muttered “damn shame” and turned the page. People die all the time like this, and with an alarming frequency. But I couldn’t allow myself to just shake it off and let it go. I didn’t know my grandmother either, but I couldn’t let her death go unmourned. Unbeknownst to me at the time, they shared something in common. They are both people whom I would have liked to know, but will never have the chance to know. All the stories anyone could tell me about these individuals could never replace the empty space of what I if I had gotten the chance to know them. As a reminder of this lesson, I tacked up the Chicago Tribune article about Andrea’s death and a piece of paper with my grandmother’s name written on it. Underneath the two items I strung a banner with the following quote:

To you who are still alive, what are things that are truly important; And while you are still alive, what are you doing about them?
Patrick H. Leblanc

People and things can disappear in an instant. It is best to make sure that one does not take those chance encounters too lightly. There is nothing worse than looking back on a missed opportunity. Making the most of what is given is essential for a life free of regrets.