Do you remember when
we saw the boy with the stuffed animal doll? It happened last June, on a warm Sunday
morning.
You and I were out in
the park that you loved so much, with glorious rays of light shining down upon
us as we rested on a rickety wooden bench. It had been one of the few days
without rain that month, and we tried to make the most of it. I remember we were
sitting together around midday, talking aimlessly, when a young teenage boy
carrying a toy animal walked past us.
It was an odd sight: A
thin adolescent with greasy black hair and heavily lidded eyes, someone who’d
be more likely to deal drugs than stroll around on a Summer morning, holding a
small animal toy in his hands. He was around the same age as us, and I remember
thinking that I’d never even consider walking around with a furry toy creature
that looked like an alpaca. The animal doll itself had bright orange fur, which
was tattered and ripped in places, but then there were also patches all over it
where major damages had been repaired. It was as if someone had given all their
love and care to a small, tatty stuffed animal toy.
Then he was gone, just
a memory in the past like so many other things now. I sat there in silence for
a moment, and then I turned to you.
“Why do you think that
guy was carrying an animal toy?” A normal question, where any other person
would have made a simple guess or have just said they didn’t know. What you did
was stand up, grin at me, and then draw in a deep breath.
“Why was he carrying
an animal toy? Maybe that toy means a lot to him, maybe it’s something with such
priceless value because it shows the beauty of his love. It could have been a
gift from his dad, a proud man in a simple gray uniform, just before he left
for the war and lost his life like so many others did. What if it was something
that his mother had left for him, a memoire of the brave and beautiful woman
that gave birth to him and had to pay such a terrible price for it? Was it a
loving present from an older sister, who wanted nothing more than the best for
him, before she had to run away from a cruel and dangerous home and leave her
little brother behind? He could have even got it from a loved one, a person
that meant the world to him, a person that he loved with all his heart, a
person that could never be replaced by someone else, a person who had to leave
him for a brighter world. It could have been a gift from me, or you, or from
the postman who comes to the door, or the doctor who checks me up, maybe it
could have even have been a present from God himself!”
Suddenly you slumped
back down on the bench, thrown into a coughing fit, one of the many which left
you immobilized for what seemed like an eternity. As it subsided you looked
back at me and smiled through your tears.
“One day, we won’t be
able to sit together like this anymore, you know? I’ll fade away into the
background as you get up and continue your bright and eventful life. Even
though I won’t be able to be with you anymore, I still want you to have something
that you can remember me by.” And with those words you took a chipped, crystal-clear
glass bead out of your pocket and pressed it into my hand. It was one of the
beads from your necklace, the necklace I had broken when we had first met, the necklace
your mother had given to you on your eighth birthday, on the same day that she died
in a terrible car accident.
Your eyes were full of
tears again, but for a different reason now. “Come on, you dummy. Take me back
to my room.”
.
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