Crystal Garden
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“Mum,” I touched my mother’s shoulder. She shrugged but didn’t wake. “MOTHER.” I shook her more aggressively. She woke up and looked at me. In the darkness, I saw her eyes widen.
“Walter,” she said in a whisper, and I saw that she was scared.
“Mum, what happened?” I knelt beside the bed.
“Walter…” she started to say, but her words broke off.
“What is it, Mum?”
“Walter, Sunny is gone,” she said under her breath, but it seemed to me like she was screaming. Her words pierced my brain like a bullet. Sunny is gone? No, I refused to believe it.
I wondered when this nightmare would finally be over. I thought I would wake up, and everything would be fine again. Those early days passed in a blur. I barely remember his funeral. I remember there were many people, and it was a beautiful sunny morning. It was as if there had not been that terrible injustice. I remember his face. Quiet, peaceful, almost childlike. 15 years old. Only 15! He had such a short life, but so many plans.
I woke up from that blur in April. I remember I was sat drawing on a bench in the orchard and suddenly the realisation hit me. He was really gone. At that moment, I felt desperate. The despair was so deep and intense, that it was as if I hit the bottom of a deep, deep pit with no way of getting out. Darkness surrounded me, and I was enveloped in it. I felt my heart trying to fight back from the searing pain and I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I wanted to hide in a secluded corner and disappear, as if I had never existed. What was my place in the world now? Who needed me? A feeling of helplessness engulfed me. I couldn’t change anything, fix it, or turn back the clock. My world faded without him. I would never see him again. I would never hear his voice or his laughter. We would never again walk together after school, and he would never tell me about his grand plans again. I wanted to howl and climb the walls. I stopped eating and sleeping. If I fell asleep, I dreamed the same dream about the garden covered with white snow and Sunny on his knees with his back to me. I came up to him, but he was cold and still. I woke up screaming.
6
One night I was drawing in my room by the lamp light. I was trying to draw my beautiful Amazon in the heat of a battle with a terrifying monster, but nothing would come. I wasted dozens of sheets of paper and tore the last one up. I got furious. The door opened, and my mother entered the room. I pretended I hadn’t seen her, took a new sheet of paper and scribbled on it. Mother sat on the edge of the bed. She was looking at me without saying a word. I scribbled some more, and it became an outline of a face.
“Walter,” mother said quietly.
I didn’t respond and kept on sketching until I’d drawn a stiff upper lip and nose.
“I know it’s hard,” she said. Well, yes it was. But in our family, we didn’t communicate with each other. We all lived our own lives, and I was perfectly fine with that. Why break the tradition? I carefully drew one eye, then the other. My mother was still talking, trying to encourage me to “open my soul”, telling me she “understands me and wants to help me”, and that she is ready to listen to my problems. No way!
I added the eyelashes, then after some thought I lengthened them. They were never interested in my problems before, and now all of a sudden, they’ve become important.
“I know a very good doctor.”
Stop. Doctor? I was going to finish off the curls, but at the mention of a doctor my pencil hovered in the air, and I paused to listen.
“Albert is a very good doctor. He’s worked with adolescents for almost 20 years. He’s a psychologist and the kids love him.”
Albert. A psychologist. Kids … It was nonsense. I didn’t need a doctor. I continued to draw; a neck, shoulders, hand, sword in hand. Or should that be a spear?
“Walter, I’ve made an appointment for next Monday.”
I opted for spear, then started to make changes to the hand. Mother sat for a while looking at me. Then she nodded either to me or to herself and left the room.
On Monday, we went to see Albert. He was one of those experts who was adored by parents who believed he would help their children. However, the children did not like Albert, and neither did the teenagers. I was lying on the couch in his office while he sat next to me in his leather chair making notes in a large notebook. I don’t know why people think that lying on a couch helps you open your heart to an unsympathetic stranger. I was lying there examining the picture on the opposite wall. It depicted a summer meadow and a little girl playing with a big sheep dog.
“Walter,” he said. “You are going through a difficult period, but it will end soon.”
“Are you sure?” I thought.
“If you shrink into yourself, it will be more difficult for you to move on. Open up to me, share your feelings, and together we will decide what to do next. We all knew Robert, he was a good friend to many, and your loss is our loss.”
Robert. No-one called him Robert. Our loss? Who the hell are you to talk about him? Thoughts raced through my head, but I was silent.
“Death doesn’t only choose the sick and old”.
Oh, really.
“Sometimes it takes the young and healthy, but God works in mysterious ways.”
C’mon, and God is here, right.
“We have to believe that he is in heaven, and he’s ok.”
Are you a psychologist or a priest?
“He’s gone, but we continue to live, and we must not give way to grief.”
You try that.
“We must find the strength to move on …”
Blah, blah, blah. He talked a lot. He tried to appeal to my feelings, then to my mind, and then just resorted to asking questions that I only answered yes or no to. Later I heard him telling my mother that he was able to get talking teenagers who were far more troubled than me, and advised her to talk to me more about what was going on.
It made little sense, and the annoying questions angered me even more. I continued to go to the therapy sessions, but still refused to open up to Albert. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I wanted everyone to leave me alone. I knew that they sympathised and were only trying to help. I knew that Sunny was gone, and I had to find a way to carry on. I knew that someday I’d probably adjust. I couldn’t share my feelings with my mother, who had suddenly remembered that I existed. Moreover, I had nothing to share with Albert, who really didn’t understand troubled teenagers like me. So, gradually the hideous monsters, who fought my beautiful Amazon, started taking the form of Albert and my parents.
7
In early May, one of my classmates, Alex, had a birthday party.
I did actually have normal relationships with my classmates. I wasn’t an outcast or a nerd, and I wasn’t an object of jokes or bullying. We just kept a respectful distance, which was a conscious choice I’d made. I never really strived to be a part of their company. It was enough for me to communicate with one person only – Sunny. But now, without him, my world became too empty. There were times when I didn’t talk to anybody for days, but now I desperately wanted to communicate. So desperately, that I went to that party.