Memory

I remember a time when I was young, I think just starting junior high school, around the time when it became all too obvious there was only one way my life could go. I was in church with my parents (Roman Catholic Sunday mass), and I was sitting in between my mother and a man who’d been in a car accident. He wore a neck brace, leg braces, and the kind of crutches that attach to the arms. Before long, he fell asleep, and my mother whispered to me to wake him up, but I wouldn’t. Her whispering grew louder and more insistent. She began poking me, but I told her he should just be left alone. Even then I knew that sleep meant peace, and being awake meant suffering. I knew he had escaped his pain, slipped into a world where his suffering couldn’t reach him, and I couldn’t bear to bring him back into it again. I wished that I could sleep and escape too, so I couldn’t take from him a peace I wanted for myself. But then he began to snore, and people were pointing, laughing. I knew what that meant also. They were mocking him, laughing at him, making fun of him. So I woke him up, because I knew what that was like too, and I couldn’t bear for him to suffer what I had to suffer, even though he’d never know it was happening. I couldn’t let them laugh. As much as I hated to make him return to his pain, I couldn’t let them laugh.