Remember Me to the Priest

I was three days old the first time I saw Father Polycarp Okeke's hands shake.

He was pouring holy water over my head. A drop fell into my eyes before the prayer began. I remember the cold. I remember his eyes refusing to meet mine. I remember my mother laughing in the front pew and a nun weeping at the back.

I did not understand, at three days old, why a priest trembles over a baby.

I understand now. I am eighteen years old. I have died three times. And tonight, I am walking up the hill to St. Anthony's Mission to ask Father Polycarp Okeke a question he has been waiting eighteen years for me to ask.

But memory is a door that swings both ways.

The letter waiting on my pillow when I came home this morning was written in my own handwriting, in handwriting that has been dead since 1962, and it says four words I cannot stop reading:

𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨.