Our Words Are Contagious

In a list of freewrite prompts, one asked me to write about my first experience with death. It took me a while to remember but this is what came of it. I decided to share it because of it’s relevance to the subject matter of Blue Linchpin: the God, country and family lie.

    He had taught me all the tricks of life that you never learn in school or hear from parents. Don’t tell anyone what you’re wishing for, they’ll only laugh. Smile at everyone, even the people you don’t like. Keep your head up when you walk and talk to people who don’t. Decorate your room exactly how you want it, no matter how girly or nerdy. Read books. Don’t lick your lips all the time or they’ll get dry and you’ll look strange.
    Mom called him a stoner, dad called him a "troubled kid" and the neighbors hissed that he was an atheist. His sister didn’t let him near her kids, she wanted to raise them to be Godly. She kicked him out when he took down the poster on her kitchen wall that told children to never question their parents. He didn’t wear black but everyone bought him black clothes with skulls and thought it was funny. He wore hand-me-downs, thrift store bargains, gray and brown and green. His mother picked his name from the Bible but slept with men whose names were mysteries.
    He hated her, hated her red nails and blond hair and thin frame. She was a sinner with the good book in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Couldn’t stand his sister for the way she never saw past her mother’s bullshit. Avoided my dad and his pseudo-philosophy. Politely nodded to my mother for her tolerance.
    I was his favorite. I was shy and skinny then but growing fat and awkward. I didn’t believe him about a lot of things then. I thought he was evil and I was terrified of him, even when he skipped getting high with mates to talk to a cousin half his age. I listened but shook my head and repeated everything I’d been told, half-believing. We’d sit on my back porch and he’d pull his hair and want to smoke but he couldn’t stop talking.
    "It’s all bullshit. It’s just all bullshit."
    I didn’t know half the words he said. I’d cling to my cross to ward those frightening unknowns off, mirroring the gesture always made when he spoke. Men and women twice his age feeling the same fear I felt, the same uncertainty, the same anger at him for speaking at all.
    When he died, they put it down to suicide. Case closed, no investigation needed. Stabbed through the heart and no questions asked. You can’t live a life without God were the words spoken over his grave, all heads nodding in agreement but those he was close to. He never gave answers, or confronted what we believed about gender and God and country. His existence alone challenged what we thought and I think we all gave a sigh of collective belief when they lowered him into the dirt and hid him from the worms. He rotted and decayed and was never allowed to become part of the collective decay we rely on. If he’d been allowed the natural burial he’d always said he’d wanted, he’d have become part of the world, contaminated it with his doubt. He was an infection, and they quarantined him.
    I forgot about him soon enough. The world continued to turn and decay and grow, myself along with it. I sprouted and evened out, wandered and tried to find myself and ignore that doubting voice I’d smothered dutifully. Eventually I failed and the world began to open as an eager virgin for me, rich with untouched mysteries but soiled by the ideas of those before me. I looked with wide eyes at everything, I questioned, I lost belief in everything but gained the world and found a voice. I turned to journalism and, so many years after he’d been quieted, it was only chance that he returned. An old birthday card signed with love by a cousin I couldn’t remember the face of. I turned journalist: asked questions and found sullen half-answers. Wanted to remember everything. With every fearful glance at his name I’d remember more the fear he brought.
    Joshua taught me all the tricks of life you never learn in school or hear from parents. We feared him and hid him away forever, covered him up before he could infect anyone else and made ourselves forget. I can’t forget now. His sister’s daughters are growing every day and wondering why that tiny voice of doubt in the back of their heads is such a sin. But not to worry. I’m their cousin, and I have so many tricks of life to teach them.

I feel it necessary to point out that while in general this is non-fiction, a few details were filled in by imagination, not someone’s memory. Some were pure fabrication but in the spirit of what he said (my memory is not good enough to remember someone’s words when I was six!), for example his dialog. The exact color of his clothing and other finer details were filled in based on general memories. The spirit of what I’ve said, however, is true. I hope. My memory fades fast.