The story

below is the in-progress first chapter of a novel that I've been working on forever. Hope you enjoy it...

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Across the Breach

My father once said that memories are merely waking dreams. The more separated we are from those events which brought forth the memory, the more indistinct and hazy they become, until they are like shadows which tug at the corner of our eye, only to disappear when we try to rest our gaze upon them. For many years, I agreed with my father on that count, but for one thing: every so often we have a memory that is as clear and solid and richly colored as when the memory was created. It is as if our minds unconsciously realize the entirety of a situation and absorb everything associated to it, locking it away in a hidden corner, yet available whenever we have need of it. It realizes important events much sooner than we do, and takes care to nurture those memories.

The wind was cold when I heard of my father's death, and it carried the promise of a storm that never came. You can feel a storm, you know? The air is charged expectantly, waiting for a minute change, and then the deluge begins. Softly at first, sometimes, but occasionally it bursts forth in great anger and force. It was not to be, however, not then, however dark and forbidding the sky, however gray it colored the land. I thought it a great wrong that the world would not grieve though my mother and I should. This was my father! So I wondered why the rain would not drop down upon us, the skies issuing forth tears and angst. When someone dies and it rains, we say the world weeps for losing them. But if the sun shines, people say that that person is smiling down upon us from some immortal plane. But my experience has shown that if souls dwell in some realm, they are concerned only with their repose in that place. The truth is that nature does not care; only the ones who love us do.

My memory of that day began just before the doorbell rang, just before we learned of the news. I was sitting on the floor and reading the newspaper. I read it meticulously every day, and my fingers were stained from turning pages and running them along the lines of articles. I read books, too, and devoured them as often as possible, but this morning I was into the newspaper. I had already passed the news of the War, and was into an article about the President, with a grainy photo of him above it. The words are lost to me, and yet I remember the lamp that I read by was spherical and white and ceramic, with a slight chip in the side turned towards the wall so it would not show. My mother was in the kitchen, and I could only see a corner of her dress from where I sat, but it was blue and didn’t have even the slightest crease and the hemline was a white band with white flowers embroidered in it. And then we heard the doorbell, and I looked up as my mother went to the door.

It was as if that chill wind and monochrome day had brought the messenger, with his neatly pressed uniform and lacquered box containing my father's belongings. How unenviable his position was, to have to bear that news to my mother and myself, though he dispatched it as well as anyone in his position could. I don’t know how many other grim tidings he had to deliver that day, nor do I care to. I prefer to think he was sent especially for our benefit, and not on some dreadful route. Such thoughts did not make that delivery any easier. Better that they send us an impersonal letter by mail, so that we may open it at our leisure, and accept the news when we were ready. This was like a knife in the stomach: quick and painful and hard healing. When the messenger of Death visits, I don’t believe there is an easy way. He was already speaking when I detected something was wrong and moved to stand behind my mother. That man's cold eyes never betrayed him, yet there was a quiver in his otherwise flat voice that disrupted his facade of iron stoicism. He told us that not two weeks past, my father's plane had disappeared into a forest of a country that was not his own. Missing in action, the soldier said. Presumed dead. And he told us how valiant and brave my father was as he struggled to keep his aircraft aloft, as it was reported, though it was riddled with bullets and the engine was on fire. Anyone would be as brave, I thought momentarily, before banishing the thought shamefully from my mind, but it still stuck in my gut, and would be long in leaving. Too many thoughts tried to occupy my mind at once, too many questions, and I felt dizzy and sick. From this point forth, I just tried not to think at all.

My mother stood as stiffly as I had ever seen her as this stranger extolled my father's virtue, her hands clasped together too tightly in front of her, her eyes narrowing, then opening wide again, as if she was trying to envision my father but could not. She listened patiently, staring past the man at our door, as if she had expected this turn of events all along, and this was merely the time for it to occur. She thanked him and took the box, running her left hand over the top of it, holding it with a touch so light that one might think she suspected even this remnant of my father to disappear should she be careless. Her nails were painted bright red.

And then there is a gap in my memory. I vaguely remember the soldier leaving, the door closing, my mother falling to her knees and weeping with only me to comfort her. I don't think she could feel my arms awkwardly embracing her. I can't recall if she embraced me. The thing that stands out most in my mind is the silence, broken only by our intermingled sobs, and that peculiar low hum that always exists and is just out of reach. It was silent the rest of that week. What words could we have possibly said to each other that might have given comfort? There were none; she had lost a husband, and I had lost a father. What more was there? In both of our lives, he was a central figure who had been ripped away, cast apart from us, across a great chasm from which there was no return.

It was a long week of grieving, and I thought it would befit my father's memory that we should never stop. The heavy sense of mourning emanated and infected us and the house and all we came in contact with. The house had a dank smell, though it was clean, and conversation was short and never about anything important. My mother was embarrassed and so was I, though she would occasionally look at me and tell me a short story about dad or say how much I looked and acted and really was just like him.

My father had been gone for almost four months before he died, so we had been without him for some time. We could deal with him being away, even on the other side of the world but knowing that he was never coming back changed the situation entirely. We were on our own, and it turned out that dad had provided for this situation, so we would be able to live without worries about money, at least. And life did endure for us, and slowly things edged back towards the normal as the funeral approached. But the pain of the loss lingered with us.

The nights were the worst. They stretched long and brought only pain. Where does the mind wander when the body is unoccupied with activity, when the blackness all around simply pervades your soul; your thoughts turn to the Final darkness, and they stir up great anxiety in you, and so inhibit sleep. It becomes a vicious circle some nights. The hours of dreamless rest that did come were few and my only solace from the sorrows of waking.

The only comfort to us was the mad thought that somehow, my father might be alive. He was only presumed dead, as the soldier had said. We comforted ourselves with that thought, and imagined great fantasies of him walking into the house with us waiting, knowing all the love we felt, being able to sweep away our sorrows with a wave of his hand. Yet they were merely wishes and dreams. But they were our way of coping, not only with his death, but also the unfairness that we did not get to say goodbye. Of all things, perhaps that was the most wrenching. You knew that he was aware of your love, of your great and deep esteem for him, but the inability to vocalize those things to him while he was here, to put into fact what was known; this was the travesty.

I was 16 when my father died in November of 1917. And I would have given anything to have him back.

I still would.