Redefinition

“An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. The man himself is ignorant of it.”
- Albert Camus
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When the call came one didn’t really know what to believe, about themselves, that is. How far were they lying to themselves, how much of their selves were lying to them.

Or did they really not know?

It was always there in their heads, at the back, locked up like a horrible and powerful monster, not to be let out for cause of the havoc it might flare up in their lives. It was impossible to even imagine how it could change their lives into hollow shells of what it used to be. The call, then, was like the fatal blow that you see coming at you and you close your eyes in hopes that it’ll never fall.

So the father picked up his keys and went to put on a tie, while the mother could do nothing but wait to leave. There was a box of tissues lying on the table, but she didn’t know whether to take them. She might need them later, I guess she felt, but if she took them she would admit that she’d need them. That much she couldn’t afford and she left them there. The granny was in the prayer room, having a fight it sounded like. I guess you try hard to defend your stand even if you don’t know against what? The inevitable? Isn’t that ironic? The TV was still on, as it had been for about 7 hours by now. The same channel, the same news, the same pictures that had changed everything. Even if they switched it off it would repeat itself, it on was at least a distraction.

They sat in the car, and drove out through the gates. The windows were up but there was nobody to switch on the radio. The father did, but it was the same story now, with the words to make up for the images. Not much better. He turned the volume down and drove on, a bit confused, not knowing whether to drive fast or slow. The mother gazed out of the window, at nothing that made any sense; even the tint made her eyes hurt today. She rolled it down, allowing the din to come in and wrap her. It was soothing to be lost like this, to be protected by meaninglessness. Yet the sense was fleeting as the familiar roads shouted to her that she was approaching the end of the journey.

They took the parking slip from the guard and drove in. by and by, they made their way to the sepulchral building, painted to look pure and serene, but it had a numbing effect on them both. They opened the door and walked in as it swung back again. The slam was deafening, like an explosion behind them because it was suddenly deathly quiet. The mother’s eyes welled up. The only sounds were the claps of shoes down the corridor and a few other, scattered people scratching away at the forms they were filling out. They walked to the nurses’ desk and explained the call they got. The nurse checked their names against a list and gave it to the father to sign, and then she directed them down one of the corridors to another door at the end. She called out a man, young, in a white coat, without a stethoscope around his neck, but a green mask around his mouth. He gave them each one and asked them to follow him in.

It is strange to be forced down that corridor, just as it is strange to be left vulnerable the violent malignancy of the silence that forces its was into your brain and bangs on the closed doors, and forces you to take a look or breaks it down anyway. In a lifetime’s search for worth, one is sometimes left at such junctures where all you believe is erased and new wisdom is wrought from fire on your mind. So try as you might to clutter yourself to complacency, the time comes, literally, to come clean, to yourself. You shiver.

The mother walked in while the father waited outside for a moment and wiped a tear from his eye with a tissue.