call•me•jonah

05.22.07

There are a million things that Jonah wants to say all the time. But he doesn’t. I think he is afraid that people don’t care to hear them. He is certain that his fear makes it so. He knows that his certainty bends reality. So he keeps quiet.

He’s kept quiet for so long about so many things, that they’ve becomes small hills, like grave mounds of thoughts, expressions, joys, fears.

He had the urge last night to hug his grandfather who died last year. It was the first time that he felt the absence of his death. It didn’t matter that he was thousands of miles from his family anyway. It was the realization that he would never hug his grandfather ever again. That that sensation was dead. He lay down in bed and focused on things he remembered until they became almost as vivid as life. His smile, his stoop, his worn arthritic machinist hands, his wink, his limp. When Jonah was little. Real little. Like four maybe. His granddad used to call him his shadow because he would follow him around and watch everything he did. But all too soon Jonah became self-concious of this simple act of homage and stopped doing it. Though for years he still desired to. He remembered these things because he wanted it to hurt.

Memories are beautiful that way aren’t they? That remembering something wonderful can cause pain. For memories are all dead things, absent things. Memories are all ghosts and nothing more. They tell us that what once was now is not.

He wanted to hug someone else’s grandfather. Adopt an old man.

This was an unusual emotion for Jonah. He doesn’t know if other people ever feel this way. As he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, he wished there was someone he could tell this to.