Following our first creative gala on November 23rd, I began to think a lot about one of the projects: Postcards from the Underworld.I thought about the controversial aspect of this project and wondered where the group came up with such an idea. In tutorial, we discussed the negative impact that this project may have had on the audience members due to the sensitivity of its subject. Some people were offended by the concept of creating fictional stories about real people, particularly people who were no longer around to tell their own story. Some people had concerns about someone in the audience possibly knowing one of the individuals used in the video. I agree with both of these problems but was also very intrigued by the idea. I was not offended by the project but rather inspired. While I understand the emotionally harmful effect that it may have had on certain viewers, being a writer I was inclined to think more of the techniques of their stories. I thought that they created extremely intricate and detailed lives for these people and did so through a variety of ways. I thought it was very effective to begin from an infant and travel through the stages of life. The project inspired me to try my own hand at this idea. However, I did not want to be at risk of offending, or possibly hurting, someone so I have changed the name of the person who’s life I created. Also, instead of visiting a cemetery, I decided to use a name that I found on a plaque on a park bench. The bench had been left in memory of that person. I hope that this will be less offensive to those who found the original project to be rather insensitive.
I tugged on my mother’s coat sleeve, my gloves slipping on the smooth leather. Tears streamed down her cheeks leaving stains that lined her face like wrinkles, making her appear well past her years. She stared straight ahead, hair blowing in a frenzy of grey wisps, like dust blown off an ancient book.
“Mama,” I said softly. “Mama, don’t cry. He wouldn’t have wanted us to be sad.”
The slow, somber music pierced the air and I pursed my lips, annoyed. No, this was not what he would have wanted. This didn’t feel like him. I rubbed my arms, shivering in the crisp October air. I wished I’d worn pants. My stocking-clad legs were covered in goose bumps the size of mosquito bites and the material of my dress chafed my skin. A soft rain showered down, enough to make the grass beneath my feet sink a little more with each movement. I stared down at the gravestone and took my mother’s hand in mine. She looked down at me, but didn’t really see me, as if her eyes were the lens of an unfocused camera. She opened her mouth to speak but unable to find any words, closed it again. She gave my hand a slight squeeze.
I remember wondering why I was so much more composed than my mother. I’ve been told that the experience of losing a child is far more traumatic than a sibling. And I was sad too, of course, but I had prepared myself for the blow long before it had happened. I was eight years old when my brother died. At least, that was when he died to me. He had gotten sick and fallen into a coma due to some superbug he’d picked up on one of his adventures. The doctors told us he wouldn’t wake up and I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that he would. At first, I think I was mad. I resented him for leaving me alone in a world he’d barely begun to teach me about. It wasn’t the first time he’d left me, however, and I resented him for that, too, but he always remembered to send me a postcard. I had one from everywhere he’d ever been. Being 14 years my senior, he had been places – Argentina, India, Amsterdam, Australia – places I could never have imagined. He had been all across the globe and, although at the time I never would have admitted it, I was proud of my big brother.
Mark was built like a draft horse. He stood tall, sturdy, solid – like a boulder. He was this immovable force that grounded my existence. He towered over me like the timber he used to haul at the lumberyard. He was thick with muscle, toned from working long hours there for countless summers, earning money for his travels. For as long as I could remember, he had been saving up. His “escape fund,” he’d called it.
He used to tell me about all of his trips. In Thailand, he’d said, the vast expanse of azure stretched over the earth, a rolling blanket of water, unobstructed, unlimited. Then he would speak of the ability of Notre Dame to make you see your place in the world, with its intricate architecture and high arches. Thousands of tea lights, lit by the visitors, illuminated the cathedral, he’d told me. I would consume his tales like they were oxygen. I longed to live the life he led but always tried to conceal my jealousy.
“Why would you want to be away for so long?” I would say, wrinkling my nose and shaking my head. “I would never want to do that.”
And he would lean back in his chair, smirking, and cross his muscular arms across his chest. “Lana,” he would tease, cocking his head to the side and peering at me as though I was transparent. “You’re telling me you don’t ever want to travel? You want to be stuck here forever, in this small town life?” Then he would lean forward and the smirk would vanish. Hands on his knees, he would get right in my face. “There’s so much to see, Lana. You can’t stay cooped up here forever, one day you’ll see. You’ve gotta live your life.”
“Live your life,” that’s what he always said. And that’s what I read as I stared down at his gravestone. As I read it that autumn day, standing shivering next to my mother, and listened to the reverend read scripture, and the music continued to drone on, and I pressed my hands tight over my ears trying to shut it all out, I realized he was right. He had believed more in those three words than I’d believed in anything in my entire life. Yes, I may only have been ten by that time, but I still envied the purity of his respect for life. My brother was able to teach me, even in death, about getting what you want out of life.
I remember my mother rushing Mark to the hospital one afternoon after he’d returned from a three-month excursion through Kenya. I had been attempting to creep into the kitchen for a snack, neglecting my homework as usual. He had only returned the night before.
“Jesus Christ,” he’d said, pressing his palms over his eyes. He sat down and rested his elbows on the kitchen table. “What the hell is going on?”
“Mark, for God sakes, don’t use that language with Lana in the house,” my mother said. She turned away from the dishes, elbows deep in water the colour of vomit. “She’s only a baby.” I scowled from my post on the staircase.
“Mom, I’m serious. I can’t even see.”
My mom dried her hands and put down the dishtowel. She approached him and rubbed his back, eyebrows furrowed. “What can I do?”
He winced, squinted his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mom, something’s not right.”
My mother told him to get in the car and was about to call for me to come downstairs when she found me already there. She grabbed my hand and coat and hurried me outside. The three of us had then rushed to the hospital. In the passenger seat, Mark had jammed his knuckles into his temples, moving them in slow circles, attempting to relieve the pain in his head. He mumbled something about it feeling as though his brain were too big for his skull. I remember placing my hands on my head and squeezing, trying to imagine how that would feel.
Once at the hospital, I wasn’t included in much of the discussion with the doctors and nurses. My mother sat me down in the waiting room and a nurse gave me a lollipop to keep me distracted. From the snippets of conversation I overheard, I remember phrases like “swelling of the brain” and “induced coma.” Of course, I didn’t understand what they meant at the time but my gut told me I wasn’t going to see my brother alive again.
I remember my mother crying as she took me in her arms and held on like I was the last thing she had on earth. I guess I was. If my brother were to die, I would be her only link to anything of the life she had created. My father had died six years before from a heart attack and my brother had told me that the impact on my mother was almost fatal in itself. My dad was the last person anyone would expect to have a heart attack. He was fit, a runner, and always encouraged us to exercise and eat well, too, so we could get the most out of life. One day, while out on his routine five-kilometre run, his heart failed. He died instantly. My mother was never the same after that.
I suppose it was my father who inspired Mark to travel in the first place. Dad was a motivational speaker who advocated an active lifestyle. He would talk to high school kids about how to capture the essence of life and reach the goals to which they aspired. These speeches had captivated Mark and, after our father’s passing, he vowed to live the life our dad had always promoted. I’ve been told my dad was an inspiring man. I was only two when he died. I only have vague memories of him.
At his request, the doctors had gone ahead and put Mark into a coma. They anticipated that it would reduce the swelling of his brain. What they hadn’t expected, of course, was that Mark would not wake up. In an attempt to help my brother, the doctors killed him.
For two years, my life felt like a game of Yahtzee; the pieces were scrambled and shaken, and spat back out again in an unpredictable mess. How things would turn out were beyond my control. Some days, the dice would come out okay, and on others, they were a failure. My family, which had once had four, had been reduced to my mother and me. Her eyes, once a vivid blue, had transformed into vacant hallways, the ends of which I could never see.
I spent my days cooking breakfast for her, and then rushing to the bus stop to try to make it to school on time. One third of the days I would miss the bus. Teachers would call my house asking to speak to my mother and I would have to tell them that she was unavailable. I became my mother’s keeper. I cooked for her, I cleaned for her, and I made sure she bathed and slept. The only times she would leave the house were to spend hours at the hospital. She would take me with her sometimes but most of the time I didn’t even want to go. I didn’t want to remember my brother like this; I wanted my memory of him to be of the strong, protective, supportive brother he’d always been to me. I couldn’t bear to see him in his comatose state. Seeing him reminded me of the first time a saw an open casket at my grandma’s funeral. It made me feel as though I was being shoved through a wood grinder, like the kind Mark had worked with. No, most of the time I didn’t want to go.
On the days that my mother couldn’t endure the pain of going to the hospital, she would lie in bed for sixteen hours of the day, curtains closed, all light barred from the room. She imprisoned herself in her own mind, shutting everyone out. The deaths of those she loved weighed on her heart, crushed her lungs, took away her breath. I know because I felt it, too. I had been so young, though; it was easier for me to cope.
“Mama?” I asked one day, pushing the door open a crack. “Can I come in?” Her bedroom was like a cave. Dark, cold – morbid, even. I remember being almost scared to enter.
“Hmm,” she replied. “Yes, dear, what is it?” In the gloom, a shadow moved on the bed. Her form, a dark mass in the blackness, appeared as a ghost rising from a grave. Being only ten, my first instinct had been to run. But she was my mother. She needed me.
I tiptoed across the carpet, scared to make any noise, lest I awake any other sleeping spirits. Climbing up onto my mother’s bed, I lay down beside her and placed my head on the pillow next to hers.
“Mama,” I repeated, hesitant. I chewed on the nail of my index finger and tucked my legs up to my chest, pulling the blanket up to my chin. “Are you ever going to come back?”
“What are you talking about, Lana?” Her voice was barely audible. “I’m right here, dear.” My lip trembled. I heard a faint drip as a tear fell from my cheek onto the pillow.
“No, mama,” I choked. “You’re not here. My mama isn’t here anymore.” I slid off the bed and tore from the room. I remember locking myself in my own, too alone and too afraid of what would happen if my mother continued on like this. I stared at myself in the mirror for hours, with tears like warrior paint streaking my face.
The next day, I awoke to the smell of greasy, fried meat wafting in through my now open door. I padded into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from my eyes, to a plate of bacon and eggs sitting on the table. I had run to her and thrown my arms around her waist. Burying my face into her wool sweater, I inhaled the deep scent of the breakfast that had caught on her clothes. “Mama,” I whispered. “I missed you.”
My mother had then sat me down at the kitchen table. She explained that the doctor had called that morning. She smiled somberly at me, silent tears falling from her eyes like rain. She clutched my hand on the table and took a deep breath.
“Lana, I know I haven’t been here for you.” Her foot jiggled in time to some unknown beat. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry.” The tears flowed more freely now.
“Mama, I know,” I said, rubbing her hand in between mine.
“It’s all over now, Lana.”
I looked straight into my mother’s eyes. She smiled again, stronger now. I didn’t need to ask. I knew what she meant. She pulled me in and locked her arms around my small body. Her heart strained against my chest and I could feel the weight lifting. Mark had finally let go. And now we could, too.
