Aliefka

The non-exclusivity of loss

published: 2010-01-11

“He was going to come to my 18th birthday as a surprise,” said the platinum blonde girl. Her eyes were fixed on my face. Tears welled up into them, dropped from her lashes, one by one. She did not once blink. “Everytime he visited Holland, we would do something fun. He’d worry about my boyfriends. And he’d blush – he blushed a lot did you know that? – while muttering that he loved me.” Two more teardrops could no longer withstand the pull of gravity and fell on her plate.
I stared at those blue eyes, and the big fat tears that formed in them. I considered how a young man had taken my arm after the commemoration service and walked with me to the reception. He spoke of the deceased man in words that could have resembled mine.
On drinking my first glass of wine at the reception, I shook my head an laughed. Loudly.
“Why are you laughing,” asked a lady.
“Just,” I said, “it’s just that you feel you have this special relationship with someone but it turns out everyone has the exact same special relationship with him.”
Her eyes twinkled as she nodded, “when my father died, it seemed I suddenly had twenty brothers and sisters I never knew I had. “He was like a father to me,” they all said.”
She grabbed my elbow, smiled back at me and said, “cheers.”
“Cheers,” I said.