Watered Roses

When you’re waiting for something to happen it’s like the whole world tries to stop it. Time decides to drag like a lead weight and any possible interruptions or obstacles pop up out of know where like your aunt at Christmas only too happy to smother you. Once you’ve waded through all that and fought through the emotional garbage that comes with it you’ll have to decide if it actually was worth the crap you had to put up with.

See when I experienced this feeling I didn’t realise for a few weeks, it was only when the first month had past and I looked back I realised how long it felt like. There was no doubt about it that month felt like a year, hell my birthday six months previous felt like it had happened more recently than that month, and as the months piled up on me I began to feel disengaged from my real life, like before it happened was just a glorious dream and somehow I’d awoken into this dull, dark reality where time had no idea how to behave.

I wasn’t alone in feeling this, the whole household was under this spell, we didn’t really talk about it though or much else for that matter and so I felt isolated none the less. He took the life out of our family when he left, that’s what it was, once he left the house seemed to be in a permanent limbo somehow living even though everyone was deadened on the inside, like a macabre  puppet show where he was the wish upon a star that made everyone real and alive.

I should explain though, ‘he’ is my brother. He left twelve months ago to visit foreign fields, well sands really. He’d left with a large group of friends, allies, comrades which ever you prefer. Many though all ready had returned home under less than savoury situations. This was the most frightening thing knowing how many were returning home and leaving him more and more venerable.

Not that he’s there any more, he’s travelling home now, all boxed up in an alien car returning. After waiting for so long to see him again I did not expect to feel dread brewing in my stomach, boiling over, scorching my insides. I dreaded looking at him, would I see life in him? Of course not that’s why he’s coming home.

Time seemed to speed up then go into overdrive as if compensating for the past twelve months. I stood alone amongst my family, gazing at bystanders stood respectively around us they would witness his return also but would they recognise the change?

I did. When the car drew up I looked at him, his eyes and it hurt, it hurt deep in my chest like the fires of hell were ripping through me, seeing his eyes so full of life, experience and happiness when mine had been dull and lifeless for so long made me feel unneeded, like he hadn’t missed me at all. He stepped out of the small car without a hint of sadness as if he’d only been gone for a moment. Inside the fires grew hotter and the ash pile climbed higher, until fighting the heat and flames his tears fell on my shoulders and his words upon my ears “I missed you.” From the ashes grew life, planted by words watered by tears spring came to the once macabre group. Amongst the early morning commuters we were roses in a wire fence happily swaying in the breeze that smelt of foreign lands, sands from Australian shores. Happy chatter ensued breaking the polite silence that occurs on train platforms, we laughed and joked marvelling at his ability to stick it out where his fellow travellers hadn’t.

Twelve months previous we said good bye to a brother, a son and our family, today we picked all up again carrying on as if nothing had ever happened leaving with the buzz of conversation while zig-zagging through the crowds.