NO HEROES

You were no goddamn hero. A brainwashed victim of a fascist, imperialist, racist war in which you, like all the others, were expendable pawns. Some, like a friend of yours whose story I learned about many years later in the unlikeliest of circumstances, lost a leg to a landmine. Irreversible, irreparable physical injuries. Others never even came home to hug their families again. Some wish they didn’t.

You did. But I know you were in pain. The sort of inexplicable, in-the-back-of-your-head pain that makes you zone out at the dinner table and makes your nightmares feel so real that you wish you never had to put your head on the pillow again. Pain that was caused because heinous, unspeakable acts were committed in front of you. As far as I know, some of them by your own hands. You weren’t taught any better and didn’t know any better either.

Thinking about them, the sleepless nights – and the ones when you wished you didn’t have to lie down – were a glimpse of conscience, morality and injustice. Things you didn’t quite know how to materialize or make sense of. That’s okay. They simply never taught you otherwise, as they vehemently insisted that you were on the right side of history.

Occasionally I’m still reminded of you – mostly in a passing sense, I must say. Recently I met someone whose resemblance to you struck me at the dinner table. It didn’t hit me right away, but how could it not?

This man, my partner’s grandfather, is one whose story I’ve been piecing together from bits and pieces. I’ve also come to know a little about his relationship with his own mortality. And how, through it all, he sat at one edge of the table opposite me, like someone who didn’t owe life a single thing. Whenever he was able to, he spoke like a man proud of what he’d achieved and how tranquil he felt at this stage. One could only hope.

It was outside, after a meal that felt both nostalgic and like a portal to a reality I never really had the chance to experience, facing this beautiful flower-filled garden, that it finally got me. I started coughing uncontrollably and breathing heavily – nothing particularly new, but highly unsettling in such a lukewarm setting.

“Are you okay? What happened?” she asked worriedly, mid-puff on her cigarette.

“Not sure. I’ll be all right,” I retorted, with desperate honesty.

We eventually headed back inside after a brief struggle, and I tried to make sense of it.

Months passed. The river never really stopped flowing.

***

My first memory of you comes from twenty-four years before this episode. I knew what a hospital was. Even at such a young age, who doesn’t? I had the same sense of it as any other five-year-old who was privileged enough never to have spent much time inside of one. Until then, at least.

My folks, like many other close relatives, parked facing your top-floor window. I vaguely recall knowing we were coming to see you. Just didn’t really know how. Your silhouette was almost indistinguishable as the summer sun reflected off the glass. A deer-in-the-headlightskind of look in my eyes – not uncommon. The fuss about it made me think that moment was, somehow, important. They were right, as you’d never be the same. Many of them wouldn’t ever see you again as the imposing, workhorse, sign-of-the-times patriarch you once were. I never did.

I now realize they were paying their respects to someone that would never return. As the sun continued to reflect off that window, with you shyly looking down at them, people were just realizing their lives were about to drastically change.

***

Drawing was never my strong suit. But I could almost sketch by heart the exact shape of every cobblestone in the kitchen walls. All the way to the translucent-ish window that would face the neighbor’s hallway. Different times. And all the way to one of the narrowest, darkest, scariest stairways I ever climbed. The attic might as well have been a mountain, one cursed with the unholiest of spirits – access was strictly forbidden, so much so that even pulling back the curtain that concealed it was, by itself, almost a crime. Now, with an almost intact visual memory, I do concede that it was rather unsettling.

Until the renovations, which I fully understood but was never really in favor of, I spent my childhood in that kitchen, and I can still put everything together in its right place. The misplaced, grainy, miniature of a television. The stiff creak of the drawer beneath the sink. Of the glass jar full of sweets that was supposed to be reserved for special occasions but instead helped me develop my stealth at a young age. Can even remember how it felt to bang my head on the robust wooden table while crawling under it.

Yet, the de facto image I retain of that kitchen is of you sitting in the exact same place every night, slurping through that goddamn straw.

Every time I went down the massive, never-ending backyard and saw the now-older, energy-depleted German Shepherd you were so proud of, I remember the stories of how great of a hunter you were. How you left with your hounds in the van and drove halfway across the island before dawn, and how, like clockwork, you’d be home at lunchtime with a couple of rabbits, grabbing them by the ears and holding them up high like trophies. How, every time we stopped by the port, they told me that was once your boat, where you’d spend countless sleepless nights – looking back, I’d argue you were better off that way.

You weren’t done there. You owned what was, admittedly, the first non-clandestine bar for the local drunks. Including yourself, more often than not. Turning the back of your own home into a goddamn butcher shop. And how, in such a small place, that made such a difference in people’s lives – and it cemented your legacy as a local legend, one that people still talk about as if you were a myth.

I remember how fetid the odor was on those early Monday mornings. How scared I’d be about all the blood and the white uniforms stained red. How dimly lit the whole thing was, really. But I also remember the hailstorm. It was Thursday, the only day you were open for business. You weren’t there, but I was standing in your creation while watchingpeople marvel outside – one even falling on his ass while trying to get a handful.

And every time I circle back to the straw. First cancer. Throat. Fucking ruthless.

Hindsight is a powerful but dangerous weapon. It makes me wonder if that shaped the inevitable and tragic end of my innocence, something everyone deals with one way or another without ever realizing. If justice was something we could morally cling to. How fair it was that every day she went to mass with the same thousand-yard stare, praying for some miracle to heal you. And nothing ever came of it. For you to be able to feel again like that untouchable businessman who reached legend status, and the man who provided without fail. To say goodbye. Even to the parts of you that didn’t age gracefully with the times, and they weren’t few.

***

I remember just starting kindergarten around the same time you got sick for the first time. Life wasn’t hard. It wasn’t perfect, either. But I seem to focus intently on that kitchen. The doorway where I stood when I saw you, struggling to down another meal. I recall how it hurt you to look at me. Later in life I realized the reaction was one of utmost sadness. What an indescribable ache it must have been to see a loved one frightened by what you had become.

How, despite it all, the invitation for an embrace and a kiss never failed to come. And what strength it must have taken not to break into pieces, just like your body was starting to.

I recently introduced you to my girlfriend via one of the many childhood photo albums I have stored. Analog will always hit differently. There you were. I was grinning, football in hand, sitting on the edge, while you and grandma flanked me. It’s the faintest image I have of you smiling.

***

Second cancer. Lungs. The straw that broke the camel’s back.

I was nine. I don’t remember much of it. Which, I can understand, is ironic, given how vividly I remember things from years earlier. But I do remember the end. We’d just finished a grueling family road trip. There were phone calls, tears, but a lot of hiding too. Caring instincts kicked in amid panic and defiance of God’s will. I somewhat understood what was happening and vividly recall a lot of anger about that ambulance not getting there sooner than it did. A thorn in this family’s side, I’d later realize.

I remember the next few days. Sleepovers in houses whose owners I barely knew, and whose kids were even more oblivious to what was happening. Of the non-stop coming and going and what a thrill it was, to an extent, for a kid that didn’t have the full picture – not even half of it. But also, how adults would be condescending to protect us and how annoying that was to someone who, even then, wanted to know everything.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, grandma wore nothing but black after that. Her stubbornness was, from then on, both the matriarch of her emotions and this family. Emotions that she’d seldom let through, shielding them from all others. But I remember her sitting next to me – in my favorite house, nonetheless. How quickly she rose from the couch and how the sobs that echoed from the bathroom, on the other side of the wall, made me realize nothing would ever be the same again.

***

Bad times running amok, I’m also reminded of silver linings. How everyone came together for you and stopped the family and its livelihood from getting torn apart. How your daughters left work to fly you out and give you the best chance of not only survival, but a remotely normal life. How everyone else filled in, growing extra arms and legs, and kept the business running to the best of their abilities.

I remember spending a lot of time in the house during that time. It wasn’t intrinsically a bad thing. I’d always get pocket change to go buy an ice cream down the street and could play outside much more freely than I could at home, with little to no supervision.

Besides, all the cool uncles were there. Only If I’d known the cost of those brave faces, seemingly unfazed by the pain.

***

This is the most I’ve ever grieved for you. Probably the most I ever will. I now realize these thoughts are taking shape on the eve of your birthday, of all days.

It’s the clearest picture I’ve ever had of how to process someone going away for good. Filling in blank spaces I didn’t even know were there, a full goddamn twenty years after the fact – and first significant death in the family.

I don’t beat myself up about it. Actually, while unexpected, I feel at peace with only coming to grips with it now. Of the many mysteries we encounter in this world, grief is certainly up there. It doesn’t fill you with overwhelming sadness in the most obvious, cathartic moments and it makes you well up at the most trivial of moments, not infrequently at the most inappropriate moments.

Sometimes you just need a fuse to be lit. Someone who resembles a man you desperately wanted to know, a picture of mythical, nostalgic proportions and a river that won’t stop flowing and whose tide refuses to calm.

***

I wish I could wrap up whatever this may be by saying wholeheartedly that I loved and always will love you. That would be the storybook ending. But I don’t love the parts of you I remember, the ones tied to a body that was broken beyond repair, and the memories they are now invoking.

Somehow, I feel a strange magnetism towards you. One I didn’t feel before or perhaps unconsciously chose to ignore for many years. The man sat at the edge of the table, just like you did. The picture reminded me how rarely were you able to be driven the small distance to my house. The worlds I will never know about.

An incessant echo, reminding me that you won’t be facing me at the edge of the table.