The Prodigal After-effects

Spring was setting, and summer rose. It was a beauty that ate out your heart, leaving it hollow, needing to be filled with wonder. Like an apple hollowed by a worm, so the sunsets I saw ate me alive. I felt like I needed to grasp it. With my power, keep it where it was, so I could awe for one more minute. I felt like every moment was priceless, and I was letting a Van Gogh slip between my grasping fingers, fingers that grasp like a baby for its bottle.

But this summer was hollow for me. And my life remained so for the rest of my years. It is strange that God makes us to love one another devotedly, but we always seem to break one another, leaving our family desperate and dying. Like Cole left me and Dad. Like Cole broke my heart, not in the traditional sense, but he broke it like so many glass shards that I found in his apartment.

This story is a stunning reality that appeared to our non-suspecting family after years of happiness. It was rain on a sunny day that turned into a black hurricane that claimed lives. Like my brother’s.

Today, I keep thinking of those happy times we had. The time when the grass was green, the neighbor’s dogs would come over and, with their silky long hair waving in the breeze; they would use their weight to knock me over by rolling onto me. Cole hadn’t liked the dogs; he thought that they my might crush me. He was very protective. But that’s what made this day perfect. I knew then, that my older brother, liked, no, loved, his little, annoying, bratty sister.

Another time, I sat by the fountain in the park. I was writing what I felt.

Strangely, I wrote it as perfectly as I felt it. I wrote the whole spectrum of mixed-up light; I formed a rainbow from my non-existent life. I remember how angry I was when he saw. His face was complexly confused while he read my diary; I, on accident, left it sitting out on the table. How insensitive I thought him! But I really was thankful. I was thankful that someone I loved really could understand me.

And I know that he knew it.

As I stared into the fragmented face of the little porcelain boy, I remembered that look the first time Cole ran away. The look that I received when I startled him climbing out the window. Throwing his stuff out. He was surprised at the angry tears that I hoped would burn his skin. The tears that I hoped would make him hurt. And I was happy, because they did. He looked bewildered, took his stuff, and ran.

He was found, of course. He was only 15, and was easily spotted sleeping on the bench in a park 10 miles from our house. It was so pathetic, so frustrating to his spirit. I was ashamed for him, and ashamed to look at him, and ashamed that maybe it was myself that ran him away. Shame. That was what took root in our house.

I wanted to die. Simply. Clearly. I wanted to die and escape these emotional bonds that tied me to the very thing that was dragging me down. I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t sit. I was being tortured by my brother. How my heart cracked and moaned, like the wood on a ship screaming for its past life, free and green.

No longer was there shame in my heart. No longer anger. But a reflective worrisome spirit. Could I have stopped this from happening. Stopped this by not looking at him in anger when he ran. Not being angry for stealing my journal. Maybe it was my fault he did this horrible crime, violating himself. Maybe it was my visit that set him off…

In the back of my mind, I knew the truth. It was Cole that hated Cole. He caused himself to do this. It was a chasm full of guilt that caused him to pick up one of these fragments I’m looking at now…and…

I knew that no longer was the world a green place, full of playful dogs and caring people who loved you more than themselves. How so very proud we are! I wanted to scream at myself. So very proud. I was proud, thinking that my troubles were the only thing that was important right here and now. Cole was so very proud, so proud that he couldn’t look his own family in the face, couldn’t say he cared anymore. Couldn’t be there to protect me. The strange thing: I needed him to protect me, from himself.

I gathered all the random stuff from his apartment into two cardboard boxes. They were full of needles, aluminum foil, spent cigarettes, beer cans, and strange knick-knacks that Cole latched onto when he found them. Like a crab to a washed up soda can. I understood why he latched though. He was trying to find the old joy he knew; the joy that would no longer see his face.

I put it all into two boxes. And I threw them all away. This was not the Cole I knew. This was someone hard and uncaring, someone…who took the easiest way out as to not face the glaring wrong in his life.

I drove home, my whole body smelling of smoke. I was disgusted.

And all I could think on, all I could remember, was that vivid memory, the only one of us together, playing a simple board game. It was just how it was, not anything spectacular. But that was it. Just us, together. Playing nicely. And I didn’t realize the preciousness of that moment. Not realized that the ones I love would soon be gone. Not realizing that my life was a series of images. I was thrust into one of them, but so many more were coming. They started off backlit and beautiful, looking like flowing water from year to year. They then turned quickly into ash.

I could only pray that God would restore some color to my life; I could only pray that this hole in my heart would be mended in time; I could only pray that I could cut out the memory of this apartment that held your death, and replace it with those happy times we had; I could only pray for forgiveness.

The Prodigal Effect

Day, heaped with day. Month, on month. A life souring in the black, a soul rotting. Light in the semi-darkness. Then tar returns. Cole lit up again.

Getting high was the only way he could escape life for a moment, a moment that has lasted almost two years.

It wasn't his fault that he is like this, though. His father sent him away from their suburban home after finding a stock of cough syrup hidden in the box springs of Cole's bed. It was lucky his dad didn't look in Cole's pillow cases and find the 100 dollars of dope hidden there.

His Dad just couldn't understand. He couldn't understand the pressure, the weight of teenage life. People like him didn't have TV's, and if they did they probably gathered around to watch Leave It to Beaver. They couldn't understand the burdens thrust upon kids here and now. The feeling of dirtiness that couldn't be wiped clean. He hated his father for not understanding. For not giving him a chance.

And drugs were so good, so capable of clearing away everything, everyone.

Staring at the perfectly planed ceiling, the charcoal colored encasement, Cole thought of Lee's face when they found his stashed Robitussin. Three years her senior, it wasn't easy for Cole to watch the disappointment color his little sister's face. They had always been close. Sharing each other's secrets, talking about what life had in store for them. She was so...real. So happy and joyful in her life. Comfortable. Now...now they both knew what lay in store for them. For one denial, refusal, bitterness. The other held pleading, and more disappointment.

A backhoe shattered his reverie. If there was an upside of living by a landfill, it was finding useful stuff among the refuse. Partly broken TV's and ragged clothing were a common find. But the ultimate discovery was the inconspicuous snowglobe.

Inside the globe a child puttered around a perfectly crafted snowman. The child's face bore an expression of joy, half hidden in a tightly wound red scarf.

Cole always saw himself as the little guy. Joyously wandering about, finding hidden happiness around him. Procuring glee from the gloom of the attic nooks. Loving the snow. At least, he used to.

Lee said he was changed. He was not joyful. Not exhilarated. Maybe she was right. Maybe years of sloth have paralyzed him, making the thought of happiness unbearable.

That couldn't be true though. He was happy when he watched the styrofoam snow fall onto the hardened snowman. He was happy when he looked into the child's gleaming face. He was happy in this cold hard room watching the cold hard winter through his cold hard window. He was happy when he lit up.

A knock at the door missing its hinges. "Cole?" and anxious voice called out. It was Lee on her daily mission of proffered deliverance. In the two years of Cole's absence, Lee never missed her weekly visit. Usually they would sit on his grubby sofa and endeavor to think of a few chatty words to communicate to each other. And they always failed. It consistently ended with Lee bursting into tears and begging for him to come home, to escape this sty, to find their love. "I know Dad misses you. Your breaking his heart slowly and torturously. Mom cries every night and Dad can't comfort her because he feels the same way. Your tearing us apart. Why won't you just come home?" And Cole just stared with a slate face at her misery. "Is this what you get from your drugs? Ignorance! How can you do this to us!" And with that Lee would leave.

She, of all people who could, didn't understand. She was like all the others. She didn't understand how much hurt he felt. How he couldn't show it. How he didn't want to.

Again, the persistent knocking, now more insistent. "Cole? Cole! Open up. I know you're there. Cole!"

Not today. Not again. He would let her beautiful voice be disappointed.

Cole curled up on the dirty sofa and cradled his snowglobe. He stared at the shiny snow, the shiny painted face, the shiny happiness. He couldn't stop the shaking. So he tried to flow through the spasms by rocking gently back and forth. And soon, he could not hear the knocking anymore. The joint was completing is purpose. Absolute indifference.

"Cole! Cole, if you can hear me, listen to what I am saying. I'm not coming back. Ever. You did what you set out to do. Mom left. Dad's not talking. I don't know what to do. Can't you help me? Comfort me?" Her voice was more frustrated. More saddened.

Silence.

"That's what i thought. I came to say goodbye. I can't forgive you anymore.

I can't wait for you to catch up. I can't wait for you to break my heart, too. If it already hasn't happened."

With that, Lee passed a note under the door, turned, and never came back.

Cole peered at the little boy's face. He was unhappy. The snow had stopped falling. It was piled around his feet.

Cole shook the sphere, but the snow wouldn't fly up like it always did. He shook it harder. Then harder. Finally, with a shout of frustration, he lobbed it at the closest stony wall. It shattered into a thousand little specks of snowy glass and water. The snowman didn't survive the fall, but the little boy did. He lay on the floor staring at Cole with the little black dots that were his eyes.

He was angry with Cole.

"What! WHAT!! What do you want from me! What can I do!"

He rolled off the couch and stumbled to the child.

"I hate you! I really do!"

He crushed it under his shoe. Then started sobbing.

He crossed to the note his sister left.

It was written in big neat letters:


Cole,


I hope you are happy.


Happiness was not what Cole felt.