Chapter Four
Papou has come to visit me.
“I met Wednesday today.” I tell him. Papou hovers by my bed. “She’s at your funeral.”
Papou smiles, that kind of smile where his eyes thin down into slits. He doesn’t look sick now. He still looks old but the usual tiredness that hid in the crinkles of his face had disappeared.
“Would you like to meet her, Papou? I’ll be seeing her again tomorrow.”
“You seem very fond of her.”
“I guess I am. But, I don’t feel right about it.”
“Why is that so?”
I sighed and I shrugged. “I just met her twice and yet she makes me feel… different. And I think it’s wrong.”
“You always feel different. Why does its strangeness makes the feeling wrong?”
I looked down at my hands. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you feel new to the feeling itself. You grew too much detached in life that you forgot how to live.” He says.
“I know how to live and I’ve lived too much and I’ve done a lot of getting by.”
“And what have you learned?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “To still live and get by.”
I realized that my grandfather was right about me being too far away from life. I was too far away that I forgot my way back. I was different and I made that as an excuse to exclude myself from people. And now that Papou’s gone, I am all alone thinking that nobody cared when all along it was me who stayed away. I like to believe that I see the world differently, that people wouldn’t understand me like Papou does. I had this commotion inside my head for years. I was afraid of letting someone in because they might not understand. The enormity and strangeness of the feeling when I’m with Wednesday scared me too. It was the upbeat of her personality that radiates into me like the rays of the sun. I was scared that if I might get too close, I might get burned.
Papou grins back at me and I was surprise to see his teeth had grown back. They were white and visible—at least to me.
“Then, if that’s the case I’d like to meet this girl.”
***
From a far as I walk my way to our meeting place, I could see the peak of the golden shower tree. Papou walked beside me. He talks about how he likes the feeling of drifting. He said it was like being lifted into air and null gravity. I told him that he’s not even “drifting”, that his feet were still on the ground. And he tells me smartly that he meant the words metaphorically.
If you were able to see drifters like Papou now, you’ll find him as an ordinary old man walking along side with his fifteen year old grandson. He doesn’t wear blood stains in his clothes or walks like a zombie. He looks as normal as any living person, only that he’s no longer breathing. Drifters don’t look like the persons they were when they died. Papou told me that when I was eight. Drifters would always look the way they once were. Peaceful and free and yet drifting.
“Were you able to see the light, Papou?” I asked him.
“Yes, I did.” He answers.
“Then why didn’t you follow it?”
He smiles down at me. “Because I still have to watch my grandson.”
When we arrived at the spot, there was no Wednesday.
