His Goodbyes

0.5

  0.5 :

" You can make anything by writing. "
- C.S. Lewis
 
  
 
 

     SOME SAY THAT PEOPLE DIE TWICE, one when our body disintegrates and become one with the earth, leaving a rack of skeleton as  evidence of our living. Twice, when the memory of us is gone from people's mind, which truly, is the very end of our arc.

Reuben prefers the first rather than the latter one - because death is an inevitable occurrence that would come the sooner the later. These bones are bound to become dust in the very end, just like how God prophecies it at the beginning of a beginning - quite like how paper turns to ashes and gold turns to rust. But to be forgotten, he knew, brings much more pain, as painful as it is to breathe.

He remembered his father coming home in the morning, stumbling on the barely lit porch with his shoelaces untied and a button on his primmed suit was opened.

His breath smelt like tangy alcohols smothered in smoke, and the moment he spoke Reuben wanted to cover his nostrils so badly but he held on. He held on because he knew Pete Johnston would do the same to his son too.

"Why did you drink, dad?" He asked, instead. Throwing an arm on his father's shoulder as he guided him inside safely. Pete grunted.

Reuben took off his suit, when he decided his father didn't hear him, or he has but decided to ignore his inquiry for the cut was too deep still. Even so, Reuben doesn't have the intention of repeating. He could ask it some other day, when they're having dinner perhaps after a few banter and laughter at the right moment and the right time. Not then.

But then he heard him, voice slurred but potent. "Because that's how your mother wants me to remember her."

"With alcohol?" Reuben asked.

"No. With passion and aggression."

That night after ten years of learning from his father how to make peace with the monsters underneath his bed, Reuben slept on the same room as him, but this time - it was him who conquers the shadows lurking from his father's sleep. It was then when he had the chance to contemplate his life sober. It also, was when he decided he wants to join the army.

He knows that it is a career path most wouldn't dare to venture, for life itself is at risk.

The courage to harm - possibly murder - another human without so much as blink would be massive, often people get nauseous merely by the thought of it. Add that with sleeping on the bare soil, and extremely lack of rest. No, it is not a road many would choose to go to. But right then, Reuben knew he has made the right choices.

He couldn't explain how, seeing there was no monogamous epiphany or a ray of light shining at his wake. But he did, and it was a feeling that settled in his bone for a long, long time.

But as one of the civilization himself, Reuben wants to be remembered. Everybody does, as the matter of fact. But no one stays alive forever. Perhaps in decades they are, but soon everyone and anyone who was born and lived and breathed in the world will be replaced with something more significant of the era.

History shifted, neither good nor bad. But as human, we are selfish creatures wanting to remain those of something - even as a dot of speck when there's millions of more.

Therefore months after, at a forgotten September where leafs are the colour of dusk and flock of birds migrate to better places, exactly ninety-one days before he presume his call, Reuben Johnstone picks up a black-nip pen.

He decides that he will relieve the best of moments in his life, with the best of people alongside him just so they can perhaps reminiscence, and know exactly how much they meant for him and to hope they thought as much to him too. Or they might have been forgotten, memory replaced by something much more significant, and if so, it would be okay too. Reuben settles with nothing less but a sketch of smile. Because by the time he's gone, he wants to be remembered, in the way he remembers them too.