Day One
Grief and Kisa Gotami’s Mustard Seed
In the beginning, when I got that phone call no one in the world should ever get…that 5 am call from my son telling me that his brother had been in an accident and that they, The Mossos, or an ambulance; ‘The Unnamed They’ took him away…I remember thinking: “Well then he’ll be fine. The body heals.” I didn’t pray, nor ask some divine deity for a favor. I just believed he was going to be fine.
Waiting for that call, the next call, was an agonizingly long pause. Flashes of the roads not taken, my parents’ Asian house with the artistically dangerous stairs, how ‘safe as houses’ New Zealand was. We aren’t there, we’re here, in this fucking lockdown in Spain. Then Dylan called back.
Fighting tears, or perhaps already drenched in tears and pausing them ever so slightly to get the words out, suspending them and speaking in such a small small voice, just so he could get the words out, and I would then know: “…he didn’t make it, mom. He’s gone. We lost him. I’m so sorry.” And the howling tears through the phone and suddenly I’m on the floor. “Are you sure? Perhaps they’re wrong?! With covid maybe the hospital got confused, right?!” Then Gabi, his girlfriend, took the phone. She saw my youngest son as well, and I knew then that she knew with her eyes what my ears weren’t hearing. Yet I continued: “but how can they be so sure…
