Within The Comfort Of My Bookshelf.

Around ten years ago when 'Harry Potter' was a huge thing, everyone seemed to be 'into' the series and were huge fans.When the movies came out, the response was similar.
However, I never seemed to have any inclination to the books or the movies, despite trying to read the first book and watching the first 3 movies with my friends.

I recall receiving flak for not enjoying fantasy enough and the feeling that one "lacks imagination" if they aren't into books like Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia.
Over the years, my love for books spanned to realistic fiction like T.C Boyle's Wild Child or memoirs like Angela's Ashes and mostly anecdotal/psychology based books like The Woman Who Changed Her Brain.

It wasn't until Boyle's Wild Child that I found comfort in the kind of books that I really am interested in.While authors of fantasy may be as creative and insightful as non-fiction ones, I feel that they have free reigns when it comes to creating stories, there's no limit or boundary ; one can fight dragons and save the world. There are morals and lessons and traces of human nature, but at large none of those things can really happen to you.

But when it comes to non-fiction, one has to convey a story that is just as gripping, intense and compelling whilst keeping it relatable and realistic as possible;stories that could happen to you or may have happened to those around you,or ones that you can learn from. I feel that fantasy authors have all the fruits in their basket to make fruit cake while authors of realistic fiction and non-fiction have only the basket to work with.

'Are', in the present tense.

Today you are 30. 

This year I will be 28. The same age when you "left". And did you really leave though? did you choose to? were you ready? Is anyone ready?

Today is not a good day. I will cry, choke up, light candles by your pictures, go through the letters you sent me and cry some more. Not because we'd be celebrating this day together, but because...instead of all the places you'd have seen, code you'd have written, thoughts you'd have shared, there is now a blank space. A space where I'm left guessing, imagining and for the most part conjuring images of your face and body here. I know what to say to you, more than often I say it out loud in my empty room. Thank God for the simulation of 28 years of Gid programmed in my brain. It's muscle memory.

However, It's too much, to have this full blown conversation with you. I can't bring myself to conjure up all the mundane thoughts, unique interpretations of your escapades on the road, at work or online, you'd have shared with me. Because a quick Google search tells me  "you would have" in grammar, is sometimes called "modals of lost opportunities", and rightly so.

So instead, I grieve. 

Grief, like I've read is really the "last act of love I can offer" you. Isn't it deeply disheartening that this is all I can offer you? Then you show up in my dreams as if to say, "I'm here". 

Noone prepared me for this maddening and persistent dissonance. 

Nonetheless, in my dissonance, in this vague in-between of aging with and without you, you are 30.

Happy Birthday Gid. 

You are in my heart. You are 30.

'Are' in the present tense. 

-Apphia D'souza

Disclaimer: I am human. I feel things.

 

Dr. Gabor Mate talks about two kinds of people when it comes to understanding any kind of pain; those who’ve experienced it and those who are trained to work with it. I happen to fall under both categories. My life took an irrevocable turn forever, in October 2014 when I heard about the ‘lesion’ (which turned out to be cancer) in my brother’s brain until four years later on 29th December 2018, when he left the earthly dimension.

Ever since then, I feel like a walking disclaimer; except that no one can see its contents. I walk with the disclaimer that I will never know how to respond when someone uses the word “dead” in a way to express anything other than actual death. I walk with the disclaimer that when someone uses the word “cancer” like it’s just another disease that affects just another statistic, I throb with fear and contempt knowing the damage it is capable of causing in a home. After this loss, the inner light is dimmer and these words now hold the reality of what I’ve watched and lived through. These words that I, too once used loosely now hold all sorts of heavy, new meaning that I can’t brush past without remembering my brother’s strained half smile with his “good side” cause the other side was paralyzed during the last month. I can’t move past words that remind me of my brother patiently leaning against a lamppost (cause he couldn’t stand without support) in Germany, while waiting for me till I ran to withdraw cash. I recall the worry of coming back too late and finding him lying on the ground, but when I rushed back to find him still holding on, still there, I stopped in my tracks. I stopped to take it in. I felt love, excruciating sadness and relief. And for a single second, I wished I could turn back time, to a safer place where he ran marathons and depended on 0 assistance to wear a glove, in the hope that I would have to never witness someone I love and admire so deeply just have to… stay there for me, without a choice or bodily control.

Wishes don’t always come true though, but I wish he stayed longer. Not against that lamppost in Germany, but on earth and in my home.

 -Apphia D'souza

To have and to hold

Photo by Paperboat

Any given date is a unsuitable date to die.
For a loved one to leave, I'd pick a date that didn't exist on a calendar, like February 30th. A day that would never remind of when a whole human being, an entire entity ceased to exist.

Each passing day is a reminder of the extent to which my brother held an immeasurable space in my journey on earth, in my mind and soul.

It's unbearable to realise all the things I can never do with him again and all the spaces we can no longer stay in; to share an emotion.

To share a feeling and witness it.