Aroura

Aroura

By: R.B. Quick

It has been many years since the Klondike gold rush brought my grandfather, grandmother, and father away from London’s streets. So many years in fact, that I was not yet born, and my father was but a boy. Father is on in age now, and I am no young soul myself, the better half of my life far behind me. Despite the years gone by since that period of hysteria, driven by hopes of gold, father tells the story like it was yesterday. His story however is not of riches, or fame, but one of love. Even now at the age of eighty-seven, with memory failing he tells the tale with the same certain air he would when I was young.

“I never wished to leave you know” he would start “London had always been my home, but your grandfather was so sure we’d make out well.” His eyes would betray a sadness which was deep as if remembering a lost friend. “I could have never prepared myself for such hardships as we faced. The long bitter nights freezing cold, with little more than thin blankets and lean to’s to protect us from falling snow.” Even when I was a boy his face was weather beaten, sallow, and sunken. His many years of toil on the traces and trails of the north had sapped away his youthful glow. “We ate only what fish we caught, or game we hunted. The slick icy climate rendered our horses useless; dogs therefore took us through the north during the years of our stay.” His eyes, an icy blue seemed to radiate the forlorn and frozen past. “I could never give up my love for London, however far it’s comforting world may have been.” Despite the many breaks he would take, the story always seemed to flow from one part to another, like a tributary on its journey to the sea. “I was such a young lad then, I had so much to learn, so many things to experience. But all was lost to the trace.” He was, not quite bitter, or resentful, but down spirited at such a loss of childhood. He would sometimes go off on aimless words of advice, sometimes pertaining to life, sometimes to love. They seemed a part of a broken whole cunningly crafted, and weaved as to seem irrelevant, but in the end, it would become as prominent as the rest. Little education by no means meant little intelligence, and his age worn face wore the animation of an artist at work, his audience little knowing his picture but admiring it, nonetheless. “Nature in her boundless glory brought me what London despite my deep unabating love for it, could not. She brought me wisdom in the fact I knew so little and had learnt so little.” He talked of nature as he would a friend, making it a tangible thing with a personality and in doing so he put a respectful attitude for that “Destructive, dastardly, and divine mistress” into me. “Yet wisdom came at a price, me and her never got on well you see, or when we did it was not for long. It was when she gave, I loved her, and when she took I didn’t. It was a relationship built on necessity, much like friendships are built on the human need for companionship.” The way he said it, brought simplicity in its beautiful complexity to light. I had always wondered in my youthful years of that necessity, fathers’ generation held. About how alien it seemed to be dependent on nature for warmth, for food. All I ever knew was comfort, yet even my comfort in the eyes of my children was alien. My comfort was love, and a home however small, I never needed much, and I had very little. “A baren life strips the city from you, takes your civilized manner, and makes the most noble gentleman savage in word. The humans much like the dogs regressed, yet the humans much farther gone than the dog never quite touched their primitive roots.” He spoke of savage fights between their canines, leaving one dead, and sometimes both if the other was wounded enough. “It saddened me, for I knew their hunger was greater than mine, their toil greater than mine. Some came from the south a warm climate and were ill prepared for such a frozen land. Many died of hunger, and those who didn’t from wounds borne in work and fight.” He would briefly touch the subject of his parents, not staying long on the topic. “Your grandfather the ambitious man he was, found nothing but disappointment in our westward flight. When all hopes of an easy life died away, he strayed to the drink, spending what little money we had, and many days and nights left me and your grandmother to our own devices in the woods.” A note of bitterness tinged his tone during this bit, and a frown deepened the lines upon his face. “Your grandmother was quite the woman, she never fell to self-pity, never let me see her pain. She exhibited a moral maturity that very few could muster. Later in life she would tell me of the sorrow she had felt in the latter years of our bondage to the northern territories of Canada.” The way he tells it is misleading, one second, he tells of hardship, and the next his unexpected love. “We met aroura and I, in the third year of my northern exile. In a land as far north as, you could go. She was beautiful aroura, an unexpected light in my dark world.” He would tell of the nights they spent together, and sometimes early mornings, but scarcely ever days. “With her everything seemed clear, and my pain dulled in those witching hours of the night. We danced me and her, hardly as one, seeing as though she had a certain rhythm I could never understand.” Perhaps I fell for aroura too, it’s hard not to love as strongly as a passionate storyteller does. “We spent many years together during which we talked, her tones matched the wind, blended with the trees, and harmonized with the birds. What a brilliant pulsing light she was! Always bringing peace to my troubled soul.” He talked in soft dreamy tones, relishing in the memories of her. “I loved her more than anything in the world, even London! I would give anything to see her once more.” He choked up only when telling of their departure from one another. “Your grandfather died, after eight long years of struggle. And the time came that me and your grandmother left. How I wish aroura could have come, but she was bound to the north, and I was leaving for the east.” A tear would trickle down his cheek, and a grip of sorrow would clutch him. “I cried the night we left, and for many nights thereafter. She was as close to a true friend I have ever had, and such a brilliant light.” Father died not long after the final telling of the story, in his sleep, as close to the peace he’d known with aroura as he could ever get. At his funeral close friends, and family remembered his many regaling tales, talked about the love he shared, his kindness, and the hole he’d left behind. This is my attempt at memorializing his greatest tale known to me, and now known to you. From the bustling streets of London, to the northern most parts of the Americas, an imprint of a brilliant light upon a humble man.

“Love gives us our grief, but it is the same necessity of loving that counteracts our grief and heals us.”