One Year Hence

Lately I’ve taken to staying up late watching tsunami footage on YouTube. I’m sure there’s an explanation for this. It’s been almost 10 years since that infamous Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, and it’s been about 1 year since the passing of both my parents. What do these two separate events have to do with each other? Nothing, except loss, and trying to understand the universe. I sit in the dark, in my cave of sorrow, waiting for that fatal wave to wash over me.

And there is nothing I can do about it. Not a single thing can change what happened.

The carnage and broken lives left behind after the water receded is not quite the same as the betrayal I’ve encountered in the wake of Mom and Dad’s death. Yet here I am, asking myself why.

Just like a tsunami, I was caught unaware. I didn’t see it coming—just like those unsuspecting tourists gatheried on the beaches of Phuket in Thailand. They came out to see a phenomena, the bay suddenly emptied of water. They had no way of knowing. That a wall of water was bearing down on them—even when it was out there, a white crescent on the horizon. The people lining the shore had no historical context, no perspective on which to judge the height of the wave.

I had no idea my father had written me out of his will, a will that endowed 2 of his 4 children, with no explanation.

My father was not a man to hold grudges or keep a ledger. He loved us all equally. There was never in my mind a premonition of preference. I was struck, blind-sided, sucked out to sea.

So my grief is doubly bound. Not only are they gone, but I am left with flimsy pieces, unresolved questions tossed out upon unquiet waters.

Should I have been worried, ran, done something differently?

There are nights I go to bed and instead of praying, I whisper to the darkness—“Dad if you see me—why?

Is there any cosmic recompense, any karmic evening up? I am wondering.

At the end of one of the videos posted at YouTube a couple who had lost their only daughter wiped tears from their eyes. They were alive and she was dead. They accepted this truth. They’d decided to move on. There wasn’t anything else for them to do. Another couple endeavored to live life to the fullest—as if they were living for all those who’d died that day. I’d like to do that.