Going Home

There is so little that is left now to remind us of what once was.

There was no grand event that ended civilization like there was in the movies we once watched. No atom bomb, no invading force, no disease that wiped us out. No, instead it was just us and our endless, selfish desires.

Almost as if humanity strived to undo the comforts it had provided itself, we demanded more. More luxury, more commodities and more comforts, to endlessly consume. We extracted all this from the system we had created until there was nothing left to take.

Slowly, and then all at once it all came crumbling down and with it, the illusions of safety and comfort we had grown so accustomed to disappeared.

Stores were left empty as supply chains could no longer offer an endless supply to our demands. Survival, the great equalizer that embraced both rich and poor alike became our new normal.

Gradually the world soon lost the humanity we had grown accustomed to; instincts of self-preservation gutted those left of empathy and care for those around us until all that remained of civilization was the abandoned cities and towns, filled with decrepit buildings that people now scavenged for anything that was left.

I was only a child, barely 7 years old when it all began.

My parents saw the writing on the walls before the rioting and violence began. They took my older brother, Blake and I as far away from the cities as they could to our small family cabin in the dense northern Canadian wilderness. Like many others, they did not think that it would be a permanent collapse, merely a short stint before the police, the military, the government; anyone would bring back a sense of normalcy.

It never came.

We grew up accustomed to survival and were hardened by the struggle and trials thrown at us by this new way of life. In a lot of ways, it was easier for me to adapt. Blake still held onto his memories of the time before it all fell apart; for me, it had all but faded away.

When our mother and father passed; it hit Blake hard. I grieved of course, but more for the loss of what I still had to learn from them.

My father was the survivalist of the family. He taught us how to hunt, to preserve meat for the long harsh winters, and which plants were safe to eat in the spring and summer months. My mother taught us how to make goods from animal skins that we could trade with the other few survivors who had left the cities and took refuge in the wild. They had kept us alive through those early years when we were too young to take care of ourselves.

Blake on the other hand fell into a deep depression following their passing. I understood how he felt but could not afford to allow myself to succumb to the same feelings of loss. Those emotions were from a time before when we could afford to feel and to love. To hold onto those emotions gave room to weakness, I pushed them down and became numb.

Blake could not do the same, he felt empty, like something was missing. Perhaps that’s why he finally did what he did.

I awoke one morning a few months after their passing to silence.

“That’s strange,” I thought to myself “Blake would have woken me if he were going out hunting.” We always told each other where we were going in case something happened.

I shot out of bed and looked feverishly around the cabin for some sign of where he had gone, I sighed in relief as I saw he had left a note, but that relief was short lived when I saw what was written.

I’m going home to Mom and Dad.

My first thought was the darkest, had he done it? Had he really taken his own life? I didn’t know he was hurting that much, why didn’t he tell me he was hurting that much?

But something didn’t sit right with that answer.

We had spoken enough about our belief in an afterlife, I knew that he did not believe that there was somewhere we went after this world. It took me a moment longer to realize what he meant by this.

He was going back to our home from before.

I quickly gathered some supplies; some jerky, dried berries, enough to get me through the four-day journey back to the small town we had grown up in.

We had never dared to travel back there. We did not want to risk running into the groups of scavengers that were known to settle near abandoned towns and prey on those passing through. But we did know from the story of how we escaped – my fathers favourite story to tell – that it was a day and a half south following the large rapid- filled river that flowed near our cabin, and another two and a half cutting east through the wilderness, following the phone towers that ran through the forest and stretched seemingly endlessly into the horizon. I threw on my warmest deer skin jacket and ran out the door.

Blake had most likely left as soon as I had fallen asleep so there was no doubt he had a six or seven hour head start. I knew there was no use in wasting my energy trying to catch up to him now that I knew where he was going.

After the long and arduous journey, I finally reached the limits of our old town. The sign that once welcomed travellers in had all but disappeared into brush that now grew over it, but enough was still visible for me to read the slogan:

Welcome to Plentiful! Your Happily Every After Starts Now!

I laughed quietly at the irony of it before travelling further down the main street that cut through the heart of the town.

An eerie sense of familiarity came over me. My memories of this place were hazy, almost as if it was a place I had only dreamt of long ago. As I walked through it, the memories became more clear and I felt my feet guide me in the right direction.

The town appeared frozen in time, aside from the overgrown lawns, the smashed windows and doors, and the occasional feral dog that crossed my path.

I kept moving cautiously forward, always keeping an eye out for scavengers but it appeared that anything of value had been stripped from this place long ago. Even the siding on some houses had been torn off, presumably to burn for warmth in the cold Canadian winters.

After about a half an hour of walking, my feet finally came to a stop in front of a particular house. The once white siding was now a dingy brown, the red door was knocked off its hinges and most of the shingles had fallen off the battered roof.

Home.

I stepped carefully into the house and the fresh footprints in the layer of dust that covered the floor caught my eye. Before following them up the stairs I looked around the place I had spent my childhood.

Faded magazines and children’s toys were still laid out across the coffee table and floor in the family room, a vase that my mother used to fill regularly with fresh flowers was now filled with brown water and the tulips and wild flowers were dead and dried up. The kitchen was mostly empty. Cabinet doors left open and the pantry shelves picked bare. It seemed that others had found their way in to pick through our home in search of food.

I carefully walked up the stairs and followed the footprints that led into my parents old bedroom where I found Blake, sitting at my mom’s old vanity, clutching tightly onto something.

“Blake,” I whispered as not to startle him, but it seemed he already knew I was there.

He turned and I saw his eyes, red and puffy from crying.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I knew if I had told you, you wouldn’t have let me come.”

“you’re damn right,” I laughed. But I couldn’t be mad, I was happy to see him and happy that he was safe.

He opened his hand to show me what he was holding, it was our mother’s old heart shaped locket, the gold still shining as it had on the last day she had worn it.

He opened it, the emotions I had pushed down for so long came bubbling up and I couldn’t help but cry. It was a picture of our parents; they were young and happy. Smiling and looking at each other as if there was no one else in the room.

It was in that moment, that I realized that the numbness I had succumbed to wasn’t a strength. It was a crutch.

Through all the pain and strife that our new lives had brought us, we were still human. I thought that love and compassion could not exist in this new world, I saw it as a weakness, but I was wrong. It was love that made us stronger and kept us going. My parents loved each other, and they loved us, and it was the power in that that kept them going and gave them the will to survive.

The pain that Blake felt, and I had refused to feel for so long was a sign that we were more than just survivors existing in this new world; we were human and our humanity existed in our ability to love and the pain that we felt showed us that that love was real.

He took the locket and put it around my neck and we walked out of that house together. It wasn’t home, it had been once but not anymore. Our home was wherever we were together and with mom and dad coming back with us, even just in the form of a small photograph encased in a heart shaped locket, we felt a little bit more whole, and I felt human once more.