Preface
The memories flood in as I walk into the house, memories I wish would disappear entirely. It's like my whole childhood is flashing before my eyes, and it's not a good thing. I remember when my brother was found dead, it comes to me as clear as the days here never are. It was two nights before Christmas' eve, I was sitting on the hanging chair on our front porch, Val and Andi were tossing a ball by the fountain, and Kay was sitting on the bench next to me. I remember swinging slowly and feeling the cold winter wind blow on my face. I remember Christmas carols playing in the distance. I remember the snow falling gently. I remember the boy who worked for my father walking into the property looking pale. I remember how everyone gathered on the porch. I remember hearing the news and feeling like my entire world had shattered, like I was on the edge of a cliff and something was telling me to jump. It was 1974 and I was barely fourteen. I remember attending a funeral on Christmas day.
This house holds most of the memories, many good ones and the bad ones, particularly the bad ones, the death, the pain, the loss. The feeling of drifting away as the waves launch me towards the shore, like I'm fighting the tide, invades me as I walk the halls. The wedding set up, the arch, the flowers, the carpets, all the decorations for my brother's wedding that mom never got to pick up and became too painful to look at after we lost him in December of the 74' remain on the yard now claimed entirely by nature as moss grows over it. It was sitting on the piano on the second floor where I learnt my sister had met her end the summer after we lost my brother. We were in Italy, all of August of 1975 we spent in Italy. Then coming back home only to know my sister left the world of the living to reunite with our brother. The furniture seems to hold memories. My eyes land on them and the pain starts to come back, in waves. It was sitting on the bench in our backyard from where I saw my oldest brother, Frank, hang himself through his bedroom window on a warm June afternoon in 1978, when I was visiting my parents. The kitchen where I found mom after she ended her life the morning after we buried Frank. Third floor bathroom where dad found his end and went to meet her.
The record player remains sitting on the coffee table in our living room, the Christmas paper wrap beneath it, it looks as if no one has laid a finger on it since Christmas of the 75' when my mom gave it to me. And probably no one has.
It's like the life has been stripped out of me, this is not the way you're supposed to feel about your family home, you're supposed to reminisce your childhood and smile back at the memories, not wish the earth would tear open and swallow you, spit you out where the living don't dwell so could reunite with your family on the other end.
There were good days spent in this house of course. Like when Michael announced his engagement and the actual wedding that followed. And when Val married Umbriel. When Andi was first told she had made it into the major leagues, when she was first featured on that magazine cover. When dad sat me down and told he had a gift for me the year he bought me the Harley. They're so little I can remember them all, count them, relive them for a second to escape the crushing reality; they're gone and they're not coming back.
This war has cost us so much, cost me so much, this war has cost us everything. Sometimes I wonder if in another timeline, in another universe life was different. Perhaps in another universe we won quicker than we did in this one, perhaps in another universe there was no war to even begin with, perhaps they all lived. But that's not this universe, and the war is not over, the war came back, as if our lifes were nothing more than videogames where you can restart the level after you lose, and I don't think I can live through it again. I don't think we can even win. Last time it took everything we had, this time what will it cost? What will it cost if we have nothing to fight with? No one to fight next to? Nothing worth fighting for?
