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I Gave Myself 10 Minutes to Cry
Maybe death and life are all around.Words & Illustration by Jake Harrison
Published in Groovy Zine (Issue 001)
When I got the call, I gave myself 10 minutes to cry. My brother had just relapsed two days earlier; my grandmother had been moved into a care home; my childhood house was being sold. And now this. Destiny asked, “Why is this all happening to you?” when I called her for reassurance but I didn’t have time to answer. Primal skills took over as I scourged around my room: clothes, shoes, phone, keys, wallet––the only artifacts tying me to the mortal world. Ten minutes earlier, I’d been asleep, and you were still here.
Now, those 10 minutes feel selfish in ways I can’t undo. They were the difference between seeing you one last time and arriving to find only your absence. The EMT assured me that you were already gone, - just "skin and bones and freezing cold." For months, those words circled around my brain, as if saying them enough could rewrite the truth. I started reading Joan Didion’s, A Year of Magical Thinking, shortly after it happened—perhaps a little too on the nose with my book choices. Didion writes, “There was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible.” Is this how all people with recently deceased loved ones feel? I still fantasize about getting there on time (– whatever “on time” means), of rediscovering the magic powers we pretended to have in our grandmother's backyard ––I’d arrive, twist my hands into impossible shapes, and you’d begin to warm. Everything would be okay again. I dream of time machines and superpowers. But inIn every timeline, I awake steeped in failure. But the truth is, I failed long before that morning. Your wonder was gone, replaced by a stillness, I confess, I didn’t recognize until it was too late. I wasn’t there for the one person who was always there for me. Maybe what I actually regret is not being able to tell you while you were still here.
Grief, Didion writes, is “a place none of us know until we reach it” –– a shock so obliterative it feels like madness. Mom and I became “cool customers” in our waking lives, yet obsessedobsess over timelines and details in private, as if we could rewrite them into something survivable – your friend, Mario, told you to go home around 3 A.M.;, mom missed your call at 3:25 A.M., – her ringer off of course;, I couldn’t sleep that night, but finally gave way around 3:40 A.M.;. Dad found you on the floor at 5 A.M.;. Mom arrived just after. I was 10 minutes late.
In the aftermath, Mom took your black Vans sneakers and I, your collection of dice, ––in an attempt to keepat keeping a piece of you here. Deep down, I knewknow I don’t have magic powers. A single keepsake/two small cubes couldn’t bring you back to lifeI can’t will you back to life. But I clutchedclutch the dice like talismans, their edges sharp against my palm, as if they could anchor me to what’s left of you. Consumed with this regret I pack: phone, passport, jeans, keys to a childhood home I can no longer enter, a photo of us – artifacts of an even colder, crueler world and leave.
When I leave, I say goodbye toleave behind everyone I thought I could disappoint and a city I so desperately lovedlove to avoid makingso as to not make the same mistakes again. I find it hard to be sad about other things. I leave under the guise of self-discovery and longing— –call me selfish because I am. Leaving being an escape from life, death creating life in New York. SomehowWhat’s worse is that I feel you even more here, though - maybe I’m just lonely. But I see your shadow standing next to mine when the sun blazes against my back,s and I feel you in the wind that pushes me a little too hard while vaping on the streets of in Kips Bay, like you’re pleading with me to stop. Even here, surrounded by too-tall buildings and bright city lights, I carry your absence like an artifact I can’t put down. I’m experiencing my first real seasons, my favorite color engulfing the landscapeall around as the leaves yellow.; I feel guilty when our cousin, Vanessa asks, “Wwhat was his favorite color ?” when writing/drafting?trying to make a memoriam post for you – I don’t know how to respond.
I tried again to give myself 10 minutes to cry but the water never ran. Instead I take 10 puffs of my strawberry mango vape. I know you liked mangoes– does that count for anything? “New city, new me,” I type as an Iinstagram caption on my phone. But winter is here and I’m all alone.
“I still really haven’t been able to cry,”, I tell Destiny, now 3,000 miles away, while I walk through Ccentral Ppark for the first time.
“We never really get that time again, huh?”, she replies.
I ponder this while watching the ducks circle around each other in a nearby pond, - creating rippling patterns by some unknown, delicate instruction. Am I too locked into patterns of my own design? LI think to myself––leaving when things get too hard, turning to vices when I can’t cry, searching forseeing signs that aren’t there? The moment passes and keeps passing and you’re still gone. God, why can’t I cry??? Somehow I remember everything in an almost mosaic of irreversibility—– call, 10 minutes, jeans, wallet, keys, drive, pack, leave, vape, write, eat, not cry, vape again, autumn, yellow, skin and California bones and freezing cold— –simply artifacts and memories and nothing more.
When I got the call, I gave myself 10 minutes to cry, but I never stopthat doesn't stop me wishing for 10 minutes more.