Dandelion Seeds

            As I crunch through the frosty grass and icy patches of snow in the cemetery, the bitter northern wind stings at my cheeks and whips my hair and scarf into my face. I can’t tell if the wind wants to pick a fight or wants me to let go and open up. I can’t tell if I keep my arms crossed against my chest from the cold or from the rush of painful memories I’m stubbornly trying to keep back. Maybe both. Maybe I’m cold because those memories have left me numb and frostbitten. Maybe the wind wants to torment me with echoes of what I did wrong, what I should have said, what I should have done. 

            I don’t remember the wind being so cruel. The wind I remember was warm and gentle, carefree but caring. A caressing breeze instead of a harsh gust. A breeze that could carry dandelion seeds and their wishes and Henry would believe they are floating and flying to find a way to make dreams come true and Henry would – 

            Stop, I cut the memory off abruptly, feeling like a bucket of ice water had been thrown on me – or at least, like I stepped into one, which I did, cracking the thin ice on a nearby puddle I plunge my shoe into by accident. Stop, don’t do this to yourself. He’s gone. I cannot think about Henry. I haven’t thought about Henry since…since a lot of stuff happened. And I don’t want to think about that stuff, I don’t want to, I can’t, can it please stop? I plead with my brain but the wind is stronger – the dandelion seed of a memory has already taken flight, swept up and carried by the wind to land and take invasive root in my mind.

                                                      ***

            When I think of Henry, I always feel a warm, sunny summer breeze smelling of lemonade and heat waves brushing against my arms. Which is meteorologically impossible since we lived near Seattle with its near eternal rain and fog and slushy winters. But Henry was all tropical fruit, pink lemonade, sunshine, and warm breezes around your arms like a close hug. Like those innocent childhood hugs when you know you love each other but neither knows what that means yet.

            Henry and I used to be inseparable. Whichever way the wind blew, that way we went together and there was no such thing as being able to pull us apart. We would throw snowballs at each other through the gusts of a blizzard, jump in a pile of leaves we just raked up before the wind scattered them again, and play badminton across our backyard fences and the breeze would often steer the birdie into a nearby tree. We treasured every moment because we didn’t know how many more Henry would still have: when you’re seven years old, you don’t understand “cancer.” You certainly can’t pronounce “Ewing sarcoma,” let alone understand how serious it is. What I did understand was that Henry wasn’t feeling well and I simply wanted to make him feel better.

            One early summer day, we were sitting on a beach towel in my backyard, under the shade of a pear tree. We each had a pile of backyard flowers in our laps, mostly clovers and dandelions. I was weaving them into flower crowns while Henry wrote our names from the stems.

            “You need to pick more,” he told me. So far, he had “Monica Ande” spelled out, running out of greenery to finish “rson.” I brought him a handful more of dandelions and he blew each one out before he formed it into a letter.

            “Why are you blowing them out? They look so empty without the puff,” I asked as a floating seed danced on the wind to my nose, nearly making me sneeze. 

            “Because you have to make a wish first.”

            “What did you wish for?”

            “I can’t tell or it won’t come true.”

            “You can tell me though,” I pointed out.

            “I wished to get better,” he said. “Before I used to wish I wouldn’t die, or if I did that I could see Minnie again,” his old pet hamster, “but since the surgery worked, I just wish to get better now.” His voice wasn’t sad or scared, just matter-of-fact. And I wasn’t sad or scared either because I believed Henry was a superhero and could always win. 

            “I’m not going to wish for that,” I told him. “I know you’ll be okay. You don’t have to take that chemical that made you throw up anymore, and you don’t have to stay in the hospital anymore. I hated going to the hospital.”

            “But you came to visit me every day,” he said curiously. 

            “Because I hate the hospital but I love you.” Back then, it didn’t mean the same thing as it did later. As it would now. 

            “But I’m still not going to wish for that,” I continued. “You’re strong enough without it.”            

“Then I’ll make a wish for you instead,” he smiled and reached for the last dandelion. And I realized, that’s the type of people we were. He liked to blow the seeds out, making a wish and hoping they would carry his requests to a place they could come true; some people are always meant to imagine. I liked to strike a match and set the puff alight like I once saw in a science demo, sparking tiny rainbow fireworks; some people are always meant to destroy.

            I don’t exactly know how we destroyed it. How I destroyed it, rather, because Henry did nothing wrong. We were still fine one moment, and the next, we weren’t forever. 

            Henry was declared cancer-free before we started fourth grade, and for the next few years, we were happy without a care in the world besides growing up together. Then high school happened. By the strange momentum with the force of hurricane winds called freshman year, Henry became that boy in school everyone loved and wanted to be around, and I became… invisible. I wouldn’t mind if at least Henry saw me, but he was constantly spun around basketball games and pep rallies and Honors classes and student council and all things that never involved me and all people who barely knew I existed. We would still walk home from the bus stop together and he would talk to me about things in his day, but it felt like we were living in parallel universes by then. By then: when we weren’t sitting at the same lunch table anymore even though we shared the same lunch period, when he stopped coming to chess club because one of his new friends convinced him to run for class president instead which he won with ease, when Ashley Benton asked him to Homecoming and he asked me which corsage he should get her. In that petty, irrational teenage way, I wished I could blame him: he abandoned me, he forgot about me, he did this, he did that. But I destroyed it. 

            “So she moved up our deadline by a week, and now everyone is scrambling to write a five-page essay by Friday that of course nobody started yet,” Henry laughed as he told me about his Honors English class, and I nodded absentmindedly. The bus had just dropped us off and we were walking home before the thunderstorm that had been roaming around all day finally decided to burst. Already, a hefty breeze tugged at unstable tree branches and smacked at trash can lids.

            “What do you think?” Henry repeated and I realized he had asked me something.

            “Sorry, what?”

            “I asked if you want to hang out with us at the mall this weekend.”

            “What?” I turned on him like an angry tornado. “Seriously?”

            “Well, yeah,” he said, eyebrows drawn in confusion. “What’s the matter?”

            “What’s the matter?” I echoed in disbelief. “After six months, you finally remember I exist?”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Your new friends, your new clubs, your new teams, and forgetting me.” I felt like a toddler, listing off vegetables I swore I'd never eat again but of course did with no protest the next time Mom made dinner. It's the most childish arguments I always wanted to pick.

            “I haven’t forgotten about you," Henry explained - quite reasonably though I didn't see it at the time, my own pride too stubborn. "We talk every day on the way home; I tell you everything. You’re the one who never seems to tell me anything but,” he shrugged. 

            “Sorry I’m not as exciting as Ashley or anyone else you care about now,” I rolled my eyes.

            “I do care about you, Monica. I thought you would know that by now. But you’re making it seem like I’m not allowed to have any other friends besides you.”

            “Since when did I stop being enough for you?” I snapped at him and he reeled back. “After all we’ve been through, after all I’ve been there for you, you leave me for them?”

            “Monica, they’re my friends.”

            “What about me?” I demanded.

            “Are you asking me to choose between them and you? Because that’s not fair.”

            “What if I am asking you that? What would you choose?”

            We’d reached my door but stopped, frozen in our tracks. A small eternity passed before he finally said, “Them. Because I never would have imagined you would make me choose.”

And then because I hated losing a fight - no matter how pointless or unimportant, I just want to prove I'm right and you're wrong and I'll argue with you until the end of time or until one of us gives up and walks away forever because all I know how to do is destroy a good thing - because of that, I lost something - someone - far more important that a trivial teenage fight.

            “Then you and I have nothing more to say to each other,” I sighed a heavy, deflated breath I didn’t even realize I was holding in and slammed the door; the gusty wind that had kicked up even stronger shuts it all the way closed between us.

            And those were the last words we ever said to each other. I didn’t even know he’d passed away two weeks before graduating from a relapse of Ewing sarcoma until my mom asked me late that night how I’m holding up and I didn't know what she was talking about and I nearly collapsed into her arms when she told me. He was supposed to be valedictorian; he was supposed to go to Caltech in the fall; he was supposed to grow up and grow old and live. I was supposed to know; I was supposed be by his side; I was supposed to bring him a dandelion to wish on and tell him he didn’t need it. There are so many supposed tos we left behind. So many I destroyed. 

                                                     ***

            It’s been ten years. I never visited Henry’s grave after the funeral. I find it now. The wind whistles eerily and makes me shudder as I look at the headstone. Around it, the first sprouts of spring are breaking through the frozen earth. I hope it’s not a dandelion. I know my wish won’t come true.