A Casual Absence

Anger manifesting as sadness seems impossible to shake without an outlet and so the rift widens and throbs between my brain and my eyes. I do not want to cry, seems melodramatic now after so many years. After 7 years. Maybe I feel like I should because at the time I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was at work at the café, bussing tables and pouring coffee, putting on a smile for the regulars whose happiness depends on the 5 minutes of cheer from the supporting cast of characters, the baristas, of their lives.

It’s the mid morning lull and I’m stacking saucers and folding half-read newspapers when I see a wallet sized photo of Aidan smiling back from the front page. I almost brush it off. He’s started some Terry Foxian marathon swim along the Trent Severn water way, I think, something athletic and philanthropic. Something totally wholesome and totally crazy, all at the same time. But then this villainous, horrific word. Slain. It punches me in the gut and for a moment I would like to collapse in a heap on the tiled floor but the door tinkles the arrival of more customers and I tuck the paper into the basket and put on a smile.

It has happened more than once now I live in the north. The inner panic, the absolute agony of being handed a gun. People up here think nothing of it, they fondle them casually and show them off like a new iphone. But the weight of it in my hand conjures horrifying images in my mind, images of flesh torn open and a heart beating blood on snow. In my mind he is always wearing white. It was his Halloween costume from a month before. The last time I saw him. I don’t even know what he was dressed as. A pirate? This billowy white blouse and a grin so wide and so gentle, with this slight awkward twinge like he was not yet completely comfortable with how absolutely beautiful he was.

He was a bit of a fringe character in my life. Always at the same parties, the same pubs. Two years behind me at our small Liberal Arts University and so somewhat of a little brother in my mind. An embarrassment of curls and eyelashes and mischievous grin, so a kid that was hard to miss. I was really down yesterday, bombarded with thoughts of sadness and anger at his violent, senseless end and my partner asked if Aidan had been my lover. I scoffed. Of course not. One does not need to have been in love with someone to mourn their death, to mourn their death years and years after the fact. And then it occurred to me. Aidan was the world’s lover.

As human beings our emotions are bonded to the casual presences in our lives in ways we don’t always realize. The Chinese woman you see on the subway on your way home from work, who one day is silently weeping and you have this urge to take her into your arms. The cheerful bank teller who is so efficient you wish she were slower if only to enjoy a few more moments of her pleasant company. And then there is the neighbor you see occasionally in the fleeting moments of gathering the mail and shoveling the driveway, a twinkling rare jewel of a neighbor who respects your privacy, and you theirs, and this silent agreement goes unnoticed, but is so integral to your peaceful existence on the planet.