Stained

The sky is making me remember.

It’s making me feel.

I wrinkle my nose at the smell of it.

And I frown at that stained, yellow horizon.

Our county set a record today: an Air Quality Index of 375, the worst ever recorded in our county, well above the “Very Unhealthy” range and about 75 points into the “Hazardous” range.

I don’t really understand what that number means in a mathematic sense.

Tried to read about it, but I can’t really concentrate.

I’d like to blame it on my migraine. And I’d like to blame my migraine on the smoke.

But really?

This is all just my “polite” way of saying I’m too stupid to wrap my head around the numbers.

The EPA uses some sort of formula, factoring in the concentrations of a bunch of different pollutants to come up with a standardized number.

Chemicals are measured in parts per million, particulates are measured in mass per volume.

I think?

Hell, I probably have it all backwards.

Like I said I can’t grasp the mathematic meaning of these numbers.

But I do know our county set a goddamned record.

Or, I guess… Canada set one for us.

I feel stupid and selfish for moaning about our dirty air when they’ve got the actual fires to deal with.

And I suppose, they’ve also got more of the smoke? Or at least thicker smoke, until it all has a chance to dissipate and blow down south.

But the smoke isn’t doing anyone or any body any good.

Google told me there are tens of thousands of deaths annually in the USA— and hundreds of thousands around the globe— from illnesses that are exacerbated by exposure to the smoke from wildfires.

A study in Toronto found that over the last decade, wild fire smoke has directly contributed to a yearly average of 2,500 premature deaths.

They said the wildfires are getting and will continue to get worse— a consequence of global warming.

As before, I can’t pretend to understand the maths.

2,500 isn’t that big a number, not really.

I think that accounts for less than 1 percent of the average yearly death count in Canada.

But compared to Dunbar’s number, 2,500 is a fucking huge number.

I haven’t counted, but psychologists say I probably only know about 600 people by name. They also say I probably can’t maintain any real depth in relationship beyond around 150 people.

So… in human terms? 2,500 people dead to smoke, in Canada alone? That’s a lot of death.

It’s a lot of pain.

It’s a lot of loss.

And it’s a lot of people in mourning.

And when I woke up this morning I could smell it like a warning.

That stifling, acrid stink.

My first thought was: why the fuck did I leave the window open last night?

My second thought was: how much carcinogenic shit did inhale in my sleep?

I hauled myself out of bed to slam the window shut.

But the stench of 800 forests and millions of square kilometers burning?

That’s the kind of smell that lingers in your nose.

My third thought was: my fucking throat hurts.

Then I wondered if that was from the smoke or some sort of psychosomatic thing.

But my watch told me my breathes per minute were way up.

And I still felt winded, just from waking.

So I took my inhaler, cursed my asthma, and sat there fuming about our collective bad luck.

I watched the sun rise.

I noticed I could look directly at our closest star— without feeling any pain whatsoever. No after-image.

A dying filament.

Like the sun itself had been sitting on a back shelf for years— and now its batteries could only muster the juice for one last fading glow.

It stayed shockingly dark outside, even till now.

Midday.

The dimness out there makes me think we’re about to be hit by a heavy storm.

But a closer look shows me the clouds are all wrong.

They are not full and ready to pour, the’yre not really clouds at all. Just a blanket of haze.

Even from behind my window I can see it will not storm.

The sky is all too dry.

And too hot.

And the sun is only a pathetic orange disc struggling at its zenith, struggling like it just might fall and scorch whatever earth the wildfires have missed.

I wonder if the sun looked this pitiful to the last sauropods who raised their faces skyward during the fall of the Cretaceous.

I doubt they knew where their Global Winter came from, nor what it meant for their kind… but I choose to believe they still felt the dinosaur-brained equivalent of unease, at seeing the daylight look so incredibly wrong.

And like those dying creatures, this environmental shift is beyond me.

Beyond my comprehension, sure.

But more: it’s beyond my ability to evade this change.

I have no where to flee to.

There is no escape for me.

So I such another breath of contaminated air, into my tightening lungs.

I still smell the smoke, even here in my house.

My throat burns and my head sways.

I cannot open the window for any fresher air.

And I don’t have the energy for any real work.

So I’ve seated myself at my writing desk to try to channel this frustration into something useful.

(Or at least something worthwhile.)

I thought I’d write a “fun” horror story.

You know the kind. One of those stories where there’s no real fear, because the monster only goes after the bad guys.

That’s what I wanted.

To write up some good old revenge porn. I’d create some sort of primordial beast— a force of nature. It would rise up from the charred Canadian wilderness and shake off great plumes of ash. Then it would gallop southward, through the rolling smoke, its claws and its teeth hungering for some blood to quench the heat of its righteous anger.

I told myself I’d write that monster hunting down and destroying the corporations and the corrupt politicians that broke and burnt the earth for profit.

But…

I can’t.

I’m not in the write headspace to write anything fun.

So I’m just sitting here, journaling.

And all this rambling is to say:

Yes, “the sky is making me remember. It’s making me feel.”

BUT

I don’t want to remember.

It’s not just the way the smoke-strained sunlight is making the whole world look like a sepia-toned photo.

It’s the smell too.

That damned, stale, dry, disgusting smell.

I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to feel.

People always seem to speak so fondly of sepia, as though nostalgia could only ever be a good thing.

Not so.

Not for me.

I’m not the type to touch moldering, yellowed papers. There’s a dusty, feel to them— when they crumble they contaminate your fingers.

It’s the same with unwanted memories.

I try to forget them.

I try to distract myself, by rambling about smoke and flashlights and dinosaurs.

But those memories never really disappear.

And on a yellow day like today, those memories are all the harder to ignore.

Even if I lock them away, and visualize them disintegrating like crumbling papers, they still leave that residue.

And the amber tone of those stains will never make me feel wistful.

Only repulsed.

He’s there whenever I close my eyes, he’s there every time I notice I’m breathing.

When I smell the smoke, he’s there, and im a child again.

I’m stuck right by his bedside. Wishing I could be anywhere else, but forced to watch.

The way that pathetic sun tried to shine through his tar-stained curtains.

The way those curtains dimmed and stained the sunlight, and the way that dimness stained the whole house sepia.

The way I’d feel my lungs seize up, whenever I had to shuffle into his room to bring him another meal he’d never touch.

Or another pack of smokes he would.

I don’t know if we had smoke from the wildfires down here back then.

I mean, I don’t remember it ever getting this bad.

But then I was a kid.

Would a smoky sky have even registered, compared thick stench I waded through indoors?

I remember begging to go somewhere else.

Not because of the smell— really back then I probably didn’t even notice it.

No, I begged to go somewhere else because I didn’t want to watch.

I did not want to see my father die.

But he insisted.

At this point I don’t remember anything else about him.

I don’t remember him before his illness.

So I don’t really know whether he was actually a good father, back when he had the ability to be one.

I don’t know if I loved him.

I don’t know if I missed him.

I mean, when he died I was…

Well I admit I was glad he was gone.

But what I mean is: when he fell ill I don’t know if I missed him being healthy.

I wish I had memories of him at his best, but all I’ve got are memories of him at his worst.

I don’t know if I missed him.

I don’t have a single fucking clue if I loved him.

But he was my father, and that alone meant he was important.

I didn’t want to watch him die.

But he insisted.

And my mother stood behind me, held me by the shoulders and told me to watch.

She told me not to close my eyes.

And this fucking Canadian smog, it reminds me of that terror.

The smell, spilling into my home, seeping through the cracks, clogging up my bronchioles…. The smell reminds me of the smog in his room.

the way my fingers are knotted right now, that reminds me of the way my mother’s fingers trembled and dug into my shoulders.

The stained yellow sky, it reminds me of his stained yellow curtains.

Hell, the way the whole earth seems drenched in yellow, it reminds me of his room.

Every inch of it, stained by the tar of 300 thousand cigarettes.

He did the math. He told me so.

I never checked his math, because I hate math. I don’t have the brain for it.

But he told me.

Between ragged breaths.

Each word was pain to my ears— because I could hear the labor in his chest.

He told me to look at everything in his room.

He told me he’d done the math. He’d started at 18, and he’d smoked a pack a day. So that put him over three hundred thousand cigarettes in his lifetime.

He told me to look at how yellow his room was.

I looked at the curtains.

I don’t remember whether I loved my father, but I do remember wanting to tear those curtains down.

He reached out and held my hand.

I remember him saying “look at everything in this room.”

And I remember looking at his big, yellowed fingers wrapped around my little pale ones. I remember him saying “300 thousand cigarettes. Don’t ever let yourself get so yellow as the things in this room.”

I remember wondering how he could speak of himself so callously.

I remember looking up at his face then, and feeling terrified.

I knew he was my father and that made him important. But his face was as a stranger’s to me: stained and sagging and withered.

The worst of it is, I can’t really remember how my dad was supposed to look.

But I know he looked very wrong then, the same way today’s sky looks just… wrong.

Dry and hot and wrong.

This wasn’t the daddy might have once had.

This man was dying, and that was the biggest change of all.

He didn’t smile. There was nothing he could say to reassure me, no comfort he could offer.

I remember him apologizing.

But I don’t remember him saying anything of the sort.

There was still an apology though, clear as day.

I could read it in his eyes.

A stranger,

A man I could not recognize,

Apologizing to me.

He lay there wheezing.

Too weak to say anything more.

Just staring at me, with his sepia eyes all wide and forlorn.

And I could read it all: he was so sorry.

I still don’t know if I loved him.

I suppose part of me must have. Because I remember hanging on to his repulsive, smoke-stained fingers until my mom told me I could let go.

I remember hating being there.

But I held on, for his sake, squeezing his big, weak, pitiful hand.

So yes, I suppose on some level I loved him.

Or maybe I just didn’t want a stranger, begging forgiveness, to feel spurned or hated in his final moments.

I’ve thought a lot about that memory in the years since.

Almost as much as I have tried not to think about that memory, in the years since.

I don’t really know what he was trying to apologize for, again…. He never said.

But I feel in my soul, I think I know exactly what he was trying to say.

His last words to me were a lesson and a warning.

I guess it’s a cliche at this point. The whole “house of the rising sun” archetype. “Oh, Son, don’t do what I have done.”

But his eyes said more, even in their final dimming.

His dying gaze was a show of regret: no real fear of death, just a desperate apology for leaving me behind.

I don’t know if I loved him. I really don’t.

I wish I had some memory of him before the yellow room— then I might have some fondness for the man who was once my father.

But…

I’m certain he loved me.

I guess, one smoker dying might not seem like that big a deal.

The death toll from the wildfires is in the thousands, and… my dad was just one guy.

One guy whom I barely knew.

And really, he did it to himself, that’s how he felt he had the authority to warn me off cigs.

But it’s motherfucking journal and I’ll write whatever the goddamned fuck I want.

It doesn’t have to be significant, it doesn’t have to mean anything.

Cause on days like today, where public broadcasts are warning everybody to stay inside…

Where the sky looks just like my old man’s smoke-stained curtains….

Where the air suffocates the same way his room used to….

I can’t really help but remember: that man loved me enough to regret leaving me.

Authors note:

Definitely fiction. My dad wasn’t ever a smoker and he’s still alive.

Inspired by some true events though.

The smoke from the wildfires in Canada has definitely triggered some of my reactive airway disease, and I’ve had to use my inhalers to manage that stuff a bit.

I can feel the impact, even having stayed indoors as much as possible.

The study I cited (about the real world death toll in Canada) actually exists. It’s depressing to think that these conditions will likely only get worse with time.

My heart goes out to others who have worse exposure and preexisting health conditions, being in a region washed with unavoidable smoke is a tough road and down the line this will mean negative health outcomes for many thousands of people.

The Dunbar number is just an idea I think, but it helps conceptualize the scale of human loss. If you think of any given death toll as “this number is around (n) times the number of people I know” it helps put large scale human loss in relatable terms.

Climate change isn’t a joke.

Sources:

https://nowtoronto.com/news/canada-wildfire-smoke-economic-cost-health-report/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number