Among Roaches and Ash

As a child I worried. Over my future, over the safety of my family, over the state of the world. It seemed to me, that on the day I opened my eyes to this Earth I was engulfed in a near constant state of anxiety. As I grew and I learned more about the world around me, my suspicions and anxieties only increased. As a result of this, a lesson that I learned at an early age, quite possibly the first lesson I ever learned, was that people didn’t enjoy listening to your worries. It interrupted the delicate balance they held between hopefulness and despair. People especially didn’t appreciate the sort of brutal honesty children seem to be unaware that they possess. As a result of this lesson, I tried my best to keep the turmoil inside. However, there were moments where these fears exploded from me, in the form of bitter tears or anger. At those times it was my mother who tried her best to pacify me. She would do her best to calm me, mostly with stories of God and reassurance of an afterlife, but there was only one phrase she shared with me that consistently stayed in the forefront of my mind. I think these particular words had such an impact because, as a child, they left me unsettled. However, as I aged and my fears morphed into much more selfish concerns, these words of comfort were something I found myself growing into. My new worries were a result of witnessing my relatives grow old and die. I became overwhelmed with the reality that life was fleeting. I found it increasingly difficult to find purpose for myself and to hold on to any kind of meaning. If one day everything was just going to end, then really, what was the point of anything at all? One day I would die, and nothing would be left of me. The exception perhaps being a stone, which too would age, disintegrate, and disappear. The very Earth itself would eventually blink out of existence and every bit of human antiquity with it. How was I supposed to find motivation or purpose in my own little world, knowing that not even the whole of human history was safe from extinction?

My mother’s father was the original source of the mantra that ultimately became my life preserver. I hadn’t known my grandfather very well. He died when I was fairly young, and I rarely saw him even when I was a child. He had been a very frank individual and I think my mother worried about the kind of situations that may have developed as a result of our contradictory personalities. He had been a soldier and, as a young man, had fought in World War II. Like most soldiers he didn’t speak much about what had happened while he served overseas. After his death my mother uncovered a Bronze Star he had been awarded, devoid of explanation. His silence only brought those around him to the conclusion that his circumstances had been exponentially brutal. There was however, one thing he had said to my mother in reference to the war, perhaps to quell her own anxieties. It was these words which she had shared with me. He had told her, “The world can’t end, I've seen it. No matter what happens there will always be some man somewhere crawling out of the roaches and the rubble."

When I reached adulthood, as a result of ever growing political unrest, my once outrageous fears began to feel more overbearing than ever. While the individual rights of citizens slowly slipped away and the threat of war became a reality, it was clear that the end of our world was quite possibly approaching. I found myself repeating my grandfather's phrase in my mind more often than ever before. Never had I thought that I'd put so much faith in roaches.

However, it wasn’t a roach that glittered amongst the rubble on that first day of the end of the world, seeming to crawl among the shards of broken rock and glass as the wind blew debris harshly across the newly quiet earth. Perhaps, from a distance someone may have mistaken it as such. In actuality, it was the bronze locket you had gifted to me, small and heart shaped. Moments before the blast, I had taken it off my neck and slid it under my pillow in a pathetic attempt to preserve it. As futile as this decision may have seemed a miracle had occurred, perhaps granted by the very God that had abandoned us in those last moments. Somehow our locket had remained intact. Flung far from my final resting place, scratched and bruised, it had settled in the skeletal remains of what had once been a home. Our pictures were still nestled inside, protected from the elements. Protected from reality. Both of us together, whole, stuck in time and serving as a reminder of the indescribable joy of past memories. There were so many memories I attributed to that locket. Memories that extended far beyond the transformative way that you loved me. My mother’s voice as she complimented it the first day that I had brought it home. My laughter after my father noticed it for the first time, six months after I had begun wearing it, and asked, bewildered, if you were still around. The feeling of my baby cousin reaching up an arm to yank at it throughout the first few months of her life.

Over everything else, this locket was a reminder of the moment I knew I had fallen in love with you. I remember that moment because of how still and quiet it was. For what felt like the first time ever, my tired brain felt relief. The anxieties that had built up and evolved over the long years of my life faded to the back of my mind. Though those worries still existed they were clouded by your presence. With your love I was content without some earth shattering purpose. It was enough to love you then and forget about the future. And now just as we had been, without warning or preparation, my anxieties had been put to rest for good. I had been granted one last mercy. What other way to be remembered than this? If my grandfather was correct and that man came stumbling out of that rubble to find our locket lying in the ash and in the heat, what more could I ask? If he held it in his hand and traced the same shape that my family had touched and admired, what more could I need? If he opened it and became witness to the pure love that you were selfless enough to share with me and I with you, it would be more than enough. How could I desire to be remembered in any other way? Among those roaches that remained ours was by far the most beautiful.