Just Beautiful

HOSPITAL

“What was it like?”

Tom’s voice snapped me out of my daydreaming. I turned around to face him and realised he was holding his hands together in his lap, twisting them somewhat impatiently. I had been in the middle of telling him about a waterfall I’d seen during cross country.

A smile appeared on my face.

“It was..” My voice trailed off as I tried to find the right adjective. Tom had always been the more literate out of the two of us; he had a way with words that no one else seemed able to replicate.

“It was beautiful.” I finished.

My twin blinked. “Just beautiful?”

I felt the scrutiny of his gaze on me as I scrambled my brain for more words. None came.

FOREST

A branch scratched my hand as I brushed it aside.

I swore under my breath.

 Already soaked through from the rain, my patience was wearing thin. Something I’d had in common with Tom had been our shared inability to wait.

Which is why I was so desperate to get out of the forest.

A mile of trail lay behind me, having already been conquered. If this were a fairytale, I would have taken a loaf of bread with me to leave a trail of crumbs. Like Hansel and Gretel, or, if we are talking in more mythological terms, like Theseus escaping the labyrinth after his defeat of the legendary Minotaur. My literary understandings have grown substantially in the past year. I guess it’s a natural acquisition that happens when one inherits such a large volume of books.

The French word for book, “livre” is similar to that of the French word for delivery – “livraison”. Maybe it’s meant to imply that reading is supposed to bring something to you. To ‘deliver’ as it were.

Part of me felt like a delivery driver (or delivery walker, in this case). Waiting to deliver a package (myself) to an inanimate recipient. In no way at all was I like a Greek hero.

Tom would have found this situation amusing. What with the expression of exasperation slapped onto my face, and my soaking wet bag of affairs, he would’ve had so many things to pick at. He liked to do that sometimes – I like to think it was a coping strategy, but I’ve now come to realise that maybe he just wanted to see me smile.

It was for him that I was out doing this, anyway.

A leaf blew across my path and I paused to take my water bottle out of my bag. The coldness hit the back of my throat as I gulped it down greedily. It was only experience that told me to leave some for the walk back.

A mile and a half certainly isn’t far, but with the elevation I was doing, it sure didn’t feel close, either. My boots were muddied from the slippery tracks, left spoiled by the centimetres of rain that had fallen within the past hour.

If you were to ask someone to describe summer, it probably wouldn’t be this, yet here I was in the middle of Oregon Summer, dripping with a mixture of rain and sweat.

Still, I thought, better than snow.

Before Tom had left us, he had asked me for a favour. Naturally, I’d agreed. What else are you supposed to do when the person you’re closest to in your life gives you a dying wish?

You fulfil it.

The cancer had kicked in fast. I had watched my own brother, my best friend, deteriorate before my own eyes. Every week a little more grey around the cheekbones, every day a little less alive. It scared me, but of course I would never tell him that. The last thing I wanted was for him to know how much I was hurting for him.

I started to walk again, after I checked my phone to see if I was still on track – I was.

The air felt still around me and I could smell the stinging scent of pine needles which seemed to hang in the air. I looked up at a tree as I passed it by, and saw the darting tail of a squirrel disappear into some branches higher up.

Even if I couldn’t see it, this forest was full of life.

HOSPITAL

“Do you know what annoys me, Matthew?” Tom said to me, propped up by pillows in his bed.

“What?” I asked.

He gestured to the poster on the wall behind me. I hadn’t looked at it properly when I’d entered, but as I turned around to face it again I saw the sculpt of a strong looking man facing off against a pink circle with the word “cancer” emblazoned across its pale blue tshirt. He looked to be winning whatever this fight was, as ‘cancer’ had been pressed against a wall and was holding up some scrawny stick hands as if it were begging for mercy.

“Well, aside from the lack of scientific accuracy-“ Tom began, but then paused to cough, his chest heaving as he did so.

“Hey!” I said, and went to grab his drink for him. He turned me away with a flick of his wrist.

Once he had recovered, he apologised. I told him not to, but he grimaced and said “I’m fine.”

I couldn’t tell if it was another attempt at dark humour (he had been making a few of those lately) or if he just didn’t want to dwell on such haunting matters, so I kept my mouth shut and nodded at him to continue.

He took a deep breath before he did.

“Aside from the startling lack of scientific accuracy, I hate how people portray having cancer as being in battle.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look at it this way. If you were dying from cancer would you want to be called a loser for doing so? Or even have that implied? For me, there’s just no bravado in that metaphor, it’s stupid.”

I couldn’t say I disagreed.

FOREST

Half a mile of dragging my feet later, I made it to my delivery location. A gap between the pine trees pointed me down to a stony shore and I felt the wind brush across my face for the first time since entering the sheltered path.

The rain had slowed by now and the sky above me was blue. Not a bright blue, as happy endings should be, but a blue nonetheless. Much better than black.

The few clouds that were visible in the sky hung back at a distance, and I decided it wasn’t likely it would rain again anytime soon. Or at least, I hoped not.

Pebbles crunched beneath my feet with each step as I walked towards the shoreline. Tom would’ve known how the lake had formed, or what its geographical name was, but I didn’t.

I wanted him to know that he didn’t lose. That he would live on. I still replayed that moment in my head everyday – the one where he told me he felt like a “loser”. My heart ached and I felt a wave of nausea not related to my earlier drink.

All of a sudden the water came into view and I felt myself skip a breath.

It was..

“Just beautiful?” Tom spoke in my mind.

More than that.

I took in the massive glittering cerulean expanse in front of me and felt instantly more humbled than I had ever felt in my life.

It was his favourite reading spot.

Although my brother had been more of a bookworm than an earthworm (so to speak) he had often ventured out to make this journey up to the lake. We both came from a nature orientated family, and had spent much of our childhood in various woods or forests around the state. Usually during weekends or summer break.

Tom had retained this passion longer than I had (I had moved onto sports of a different kind, but still didn’t mind the occasional walk), and after looking around I instantly understood why.

It was some sort of safe haven. An oasis in a desert. The clear water that lapped against the rocks, blue like diamonds where the sun hit the centre, made a comforting rushing sound that acted as white noise; a balm to my worries.

I wished then that I could tell Tom what I thought. I would’ve even used a metaphor. Or perhaps a simile, if I felt daring enough.

Throughout his stays in hospital, he had often asked me to describe my experiences in as much detail as I could remember. He told me that if you could “read someone like a book” then there was no reason why you couldn’t ask them to read aloud for you. I tried hard to tell him everything that was going on in my life, but the words always seemed to escape me.

As I sat myself down on the rocks, using the dry inside of my raincoat as a temporary seat cushion, something finally dawned on me.

People have told me “sorry for your loss” more times than I’d like to count. For some reason people find it socially acceptable (and encouraged) to remind someone everyday of what (or who) is no longer in their life.

The water before me twinkled knowingly. If this truly were a fairytale, I would’ve described it as alive.

My brother loved this place. My twin. If I looked into the water I could see his own face staring back at me through my own. My brother loved this place because it was a part of him. The introverted bookworm who loved to hike, and who never gave up on his sense of humour or personality. I realised that by coming here, I was coming to a part of him. It brought me closer to him than I ever had before.

I understood then, why it was that he asked me to visit. I gazed at my reflection and stretched my hand out as if to shake my own hand. The water rippled in shockwaves where my fingertips skimmed the surface. He was all around me. His life.

He was with me in that moment, and has been every moment since.

It is not the form that makes someone. It is the someone that makes the form. Tom visits me in many different ways. Sometimes it’s in the form of a memory, or a scent, or something that reminds me of him. I’ll go to play a song and pause momentarily as I remember Tom loves that song, too.

We live in the present, because the present is a gift. The past has passed (quite literally) but we always have the future to look forward to, and the current day to live in.

It’s all about changing your perspective.

For example.

At the beginning, I described something as beautiful.

“Just beautiful?”

Not just. Ugly, too, sometimes. But if you asked me one word to describe life, I would still give the same response as I did that day. It’s not a loss.

 It’s beautiful.