Blood Brothers
"He'll have the same blood type as me after the donation," I said to Karen, my psychologist.
"You mean he doesn't already? They don't check for that before a bone marrow donation?"
"No, apparently not. He'll be type O positive from now on, regardless of what it was before. And his blood will use my DNA and not his own. We'll be blood brothers. He'll be a chimera."
"When will this all happen?"
"I donate on June 25th," I said, "and he'll be receiving my bone marrow on June 26th. Which is..." But I trailed off.
"Your mom's birthday," she finally said, nodding, "it sounds to me like the universe is trying to tell you something."
* * *
I sat in the grass staring at the two tombstones: my mother's on the left, my grandfather's to the right. The roiling blue clouds threatened rain, as if the sky was reaching for the Earth in its longing and agony, and I felt the pressing sadness wash over me like a wave.
"I'm thirty-six mom," I sighed, tears running down my face, "and you died at thirty-six. And it all seems so incomplete. It seems so savage. So unfair."
* * *
I stood on the lake shore and stared out at the water. The anniversary of her death is coming, and I can feel it in my bones. I can feel it the way an old man feels a storm brewing out at sea. I guess that's why I came back to my hometown, in a way: a storm seems easier to withstand when you remember the places where you once hid from monsters.
I drove past my old house, and I wondered at the echoes and memories that haunted the upstairs; the closets I shoved as many skeletons in, and the walls that were eventually broken by the words that they heard.
I walked along the edge of the old train trestle, the one that goes over the river at the outskirts of town, and marveled at the jump I used to take without considering the danger. It seemed so much higher than I remembered, and the water so much more shallow and narrow. I held myself against a steel beam and felt the dizziness of fear pass over me as I ignored the sudden realization that I wanted to fall into the darkness below.
* * *
"She's dying. She's choosing to die, and there's nothing I can do. At least my mom fought," I told Karen, my psychologist.
"You're right. There isn't anything you can do."
"But I'm saving someone I don't even know, for fucks' sake!" I was angry, furious, "I'm saving a fifty-four-year-old that lives in Spain. I'm saving his family the grief that I can't prevent in my own life--"
"Andrew," she said softly, "you can't just be angry at death. Or God. Or no-God. Or whatever. You already do everything that you can to fight against death. I've seen you do it. But as humans, we always lose. Always. We don't control fate."
"So that's it? I give life to a stranger, and I do nothing for someone I love? That's fucking awful."
"It is whatever you make of it. Life or death."
* * *
She closed her eyes when the music played. And I realized how envious I was, how jealous I was of the look on her face. There is a solace to be found in something as simple as a melody played in darkness, even over rumination. The gentle sway of a note and her eyes closed and I remembered what I once called that feeling: church. It's a prayer.
Even for the faithless and hapless. Even for the damned and angry, like me.
* * *
"I'm saving someone with the life that you gave me," I told both the tombstones, "with the life that you nurtured within me. I don't know if it's enough, I don't know if it's fair, and I don't know if I'm doing right, but happy birthday. To both of you. I'm trying."
The wind blew, the trees shook, and the rain withheld its fall from the sky. But this is no Hollywood story. This is not the point where there is sudden sunshine and rainbows and our character is overjoyed and knows that his loved ones have not left him. It was still just an empty field with stones reaching up from the ground like broken teeth. It was just as empty and dead and barren as it was when I arrived.
I went back to my car, turned the music up as loud as it would go, and sang my way back down the mountain.