Sweet Redemption

You are familiar with these feelings: lost, sorrow, sadness, grieve. You know them well, you have mired in them before, you know their faces, their colors; they are as close to you as your own shadow, as your own dreams.

They called you at the deepest of the night, a striking thunder lightening the sky. You woke up to an anonymous voice saying your sister’s name, saying that she and her husband had a crash under the withe snow, that they both were dead. Two days ago they landed at your doorstep to ask you to mind their twins for a few days while they settled down on their new house. They were so happy, so delighted to start anew. A new place, a new job, a bubbling family. They had it all and now they had nothing – they turned to ashes, buried deep down in your heart, always at the back of your mind, at the tip of your tongue, a cuss, a jinx, a spell that chase after you.

You watched them sleeping – such a peaceful sight, and they were so young, they wouldn’t remember, ghosts wouldn’t haunt them as they still do with you. No memories to hold on, no tears falling on cushions at night when the emotions are too raw and you are too tired to fight them and you allow yourself a break from being strong, from pretending that all is good and well.

Nothing is good in your life, though the twins help you. They are your force, the reason you haven’t given up – to the pressure, to the bereaved. They jump in your bed and laugh and it is balsam to your heart. And you scoop them, hug them tightly, tickle their little bellies and everything falls into place.

Until they don’t anymore.

It stars like nothing; Taeha’s hands feel numb and the fork falls from his grip. He is a good boy who knows how to eat by himself at age three, but he is still a baby who likes to get attention so you give it to him. You smile at him and feed him, making all types of funny sounds and gestures as your mother did before - a plane landing on his opened, delighting mouth and he welcomes you with a stream of giggles and you do it again, do it with Junhu too, who is watching, expectantly, waiting for his turn. You entertain them and their happiness soaks you, their clapping hands makes your heart beats, content.

But it happens again, constantly, worsening the extend. He loses strength on his limbs, he barely walks by himself when Junhu does it all perfectly. And he is constantly exhausted, has stopped playing, not even enjoying his favorite cartoons. He speaks in a puff of words and his skin becomes pale and thin and you become worried. He crawls to the bed and stops being active - he becomes a baby even when he is already three, needs you to carry him around, even from the easiest of the tasks, he is to weaken to do anything by himself and it annoys him as it bugs you, troubling his life and worrying yours - this isn't normal, you can't rub it off as a childish act seeking for attention, it is something more, something you have to look for.

The doctors tell you nothing even when they run millions of tests on him, drawing his blood, and have him monitored.

Dr. Lee Seunghoon is the bearer of bad news. But he is so accustomed to tears: of joy, of fear, of relief, of desperation, of happiness. He knows them all too well, he is not surprised when you break up in front of him, doesn’t judge you. Not when he tells you the truth.

“There is nothing we can do. I’m so sorry, Kim Jinwoo".

Despite his words, he takes Taeha under his care. On the days that he is so weak that he can barely breathe by himself, Seunghoon drives to your place, brings with him the ventilator that carries the much-needed oxygen straight to Taeha’s lungs. On the days that he is good enough, you bring him to therapy at Seunghoon’s hospital. You see him more than you see anybody else - more than your own family, he becomes a friend, someone you can trust, you can confide in.

And you leave your job – too demanding, it allows you so little time to enjoy your family and you have savings, don’t need the stress and the time-consuming routine. You try to spend as much time as possible with the twins, doing all the activities and out-going that Taeha can take. You do what you can to provide for them a safe, healthy environment, a joyous home filled with stars and sweet dreams – even when monsters are eating you alive, your core rotten with fears and tears, your sanity at stake, you put a smile on your face every morning despite that you haven’t rest a bit.

“Why I can’t play like Junhu?” he asks you on a sunny day. You are in the park and Junhu is running, kicking a ball. Taeha is sitting next to you in a bank, the light painting his bleak skin in sparkles of yellow and golden. He is watching his brother with longing eyes, a heart filled with torments and regrets. He is only five, too young to understand what is happening, but too aware of his condition to need an answer.

You leave his pleading unsolved – too hard to say it aloud, too unfair to bring so much agony to a little boy like him who deserves the whole world. His time is ticking and you recount his breathing, the thumbs of his heart, you note it down to remember, praying to the almighty to gift you one more day, one more hour with him, to bestow Taeha to survive, to keep on growing, to keep on living (but Gods ignore your pleads, take no pity, they are cruel and heartless).

And you watch him becoming small and soft and weak, his muscles atrophied, stunted. It pains you to see it, how he is slowly losing his will, getting sleepy all the time, too tired to even try, how he, eventually, will forget how to breathe, how to move, how to speak. Your sweet Taeha, who has always been adventurous, the first one to walk, to run to your arms, to say your name, the one crying the loudest. Taeha, who loved to be outside and that is now confined in bed, Junhu always near him, hands pressed together. Junhu is the only joy that the sickness hasn’t taken away from Taeha and he is always by his side, the three of you sleeping in your bed because you don’t want to miss a thing, you want to enjoy to the fullest all the little time that you still have as a family, as a unit. You hold them close to your heart and reckon the days, the hours that have been granted, thanks to the sky every day when Taeha wakes up, feeling oxygen on his face because even though you know his time is limited, you can’t believe that, soon, he will leave you – that you won’t have to worry about him anymore, the realization heavy against your rib, a weight too burdensome to carry and so you left it unsaid, beating on your mind.

You have done everything in your hands to make him comfortable. You spoon-feed him, carry him everywhere he wants to go, change his clothes when he forgets how to use a toilet, have paid for therapies that are only prolonging his suffering. But you are not ready to let him go – you will never be, it’s normal, he is more than your nephew now, he is a link to your sister, her son that you took under your wings to reminiscence her, to cherish her linage and you have failed her, haven’t been able to protect them, to keep them safe. And sorrows drag you down, tie your feet and your heart. Your mind spins and aches in an elongated pain that matches Taeha’s.

Dr. Lee is nothing but kind to you, to the kids. He lets Junhu stay with Taeha when they run tests on him, during the painful recovery, he lets him sneak in his hospital bed even when it’s not allowed – he grants them to stay past the visit hours and does his best to help, to keep Taeha at ease and content. He keeps you company when the long hours exhaust you: when all your might is not enough. He drives you home when it’s too late, when it’s too hard to part ways from Taeha, too scared that it might be the last change, the last moment together. Dr. Lee pats your shoulder, smiles reassuringly at you and you sigh under his hand, tender, strong: the hand of someone who has suffered and fought and lost – and wins occasionally, he explains to you, bringing some solace to your heart with stories about all the kids he could save. Not Taeha, though, never him – for him expectation is vain because there is nothing that science or medicine can do, only to ease the ordeal, provide him with another day of agonizing life.

He is in a hospital bed again and your tears are flooding. He reaches your cheeks with his tiny hands, wipes them away.

"Why are you crying, uncle?" he asks in between the beeps of his breathing machine. It is so unfair that Taeha has his time counted this way. "I'm going to a better place, I'll see mummy again," he says, sedated, in a last bliss of hope. You smile amiss the curtain of droplets staining your face.

"Yes, say hello to your mummy for me, please," and you try so hard to be strong when he nods but, God, how is it possible to bring so much suffering to such a little bundle of joy?

By his side, silently waiting, Dr. Lee waits, the pediatrician that has stayed with you through thick and thin, since they diagnosed Taeha, two years ago. He has fought the disease with you, has done his best, has lost the battle but is allowing you a last try, a moment to spend with Taeha while he still breathes, while he still can. From where Dr. Lee is standing, you see him nodding at you. You hoist up Junhu and both lay on the small bed, cramped, containing three that fight to fit, a mess of limps over the green, paper sheets, Taeha pressed between the people that he loves the most, who have been with him all the way down his sickness. You help him rest his head on your chest, your heart-beat lulling him, smooching his forehead, slowly telling him one last bed-time story, a fairy-tale about loss and love and never-ending missing that will be your life soon. And, like this, he falls asleep atop of you, a smile on his clapped lips that taste like pills and puke and hospital rooms. You kiss him gently one last time whilst his flesh is still warm, whilst he can still feel it.

His skin is cold and your tears bath it desperate, a stream of them raining on Taeha’s little body, consumed to the illness. He stays very still, unmoving, and you know it. You hold onto him hard, crying until the doctors come and take him away from your reach – and you cry harder, cry while profaning the name of the sacred (you blame God and your sister and everything in your mind, spite on them, angry and furious and then Junhu looks up at you with starry eyes and you shut up, rub his hair and smile through the waterfall of drops). You have to be strong for him now.

But you break up after the funeral. Seeing Junhu, who looks exactly the same as Taeha, so lively, brings back memories you want to bury with the ashes of the death. But they haunt you instead, following you everywhere, and having Junhu around only stirs them, like a wave coming to drown you in an ocean of despair. It’s too cruel and you can’t take it – you have a lot to deal with, your head is a mess and you can’t breathe, you just... can't.

So you send him away with your parents because you are no longer yourself. And, even when he yells that he wants to stay, you bite the bullet and say goodbye with no regrets though, all alone, you don’t feel any more at peace.

You burn yourself down until darkness is all you can see, all you can sense – a hollow, a vacuum space where you are not allow any emotions and it is such a bliss to not feel, you drown another bottle and you have lost count (you have lost yourself in grieve and pain). Oblivion is such a blessing upon your soul and you want to stay, you crawl back every day, for days that stretch to weeks and you don’t longer know – you don’t longer care.

The doorbell rings and it takes you out of your revelry. Your head hurts and the room swirls around and you don’t touch the ground – you fall gracefulness, your knees hitting the floor. You stumble to get up again, following the annoying, bothersome noise. You look as you feel – like crap, but you think the delivery man has seen worse, so you don’t worry and open the door.

It is not the delivery man but Dr. Lee with a concerned expression upon his pretty face.

“I’m…” but the words die on his lips.

You don’t want to listen to his sorry condolences when he wasn’t even able to assist to the funeral. You don’t want his pity or his comfort or whatever he has come to provide you with. You don’t want him around – after all, he failed you, failed Taeha, he is as useless as you, and the thought is intrepid, climbs on your head like poisonous ivies. But sharing the blame feels good and you want to delete that disgusting expression of him, want to punch his face, make him feel a bit of your hate, of your fury and resentment. You want to hurt him the same way he hurt you when he first told you about Taeha’s condition - “There is nothing to do”, he had said and so he did. Absolutely nothing. And your mind clouds all he did, all his kindness replaced by hot blood and bile, all his attempts to help removed from your brain. He did nothing and it is fuel to the burning despite you feel and that you are widening with twisted memories and feelings.

He doesn’t stop you when you ramble on your sweet stupor about how much you loath his mere existence, how better it would be if the one dying were you instead of your kid, how unfair and how nasty and how it hurts, how much it put weight on your chest to the point that it is fracturing it; you are a prisoner of all the burdens that have taken you hostage – you belong to the grief, you are one with it, with the agony and the distress and the suffering of the missing, of being the one surviving, the one forced to face another day, another prick on the chest. You detested it, you abhor everything – Taeha’s name turns into a curse and you don’t say it because it crumbles you down, it left you panting, eyes float with blood.

You don’t want to hear his apologies, his excuses, how he was too busy saving another kid but you listen to him nevertheless because you don’t want this agony to fall upon another family – you don’t want to share this load, you keep it to yourself, pinning the blame on your heart. Seunghoon explains to you that he was able to remove a tumor the size of a small pebble from a patient’s kidney, that the child will survive with a lot of chemo and weeks hospitalized, the poor thing. And you find yourself smiling despite the angst and the tears, despite that it’s not Taeha and you don’t care about anyone else but the one who left you gasping for air, for a moment of forgetfulness.

He keeps you company, assures you that the black hole you are in now will, with time, disappear, that you will be the same. You tell him that you have been there before but, back then, you had the kids to look after, someone under-girding you. Now you are all alone, thrown to a world that makes no sense, that has lost all the colors just as you lost his name to the wind - all your hopes and your dreams wasted, just like you, yielding to alcohol to pass another day, to halt the emotions overwhelming you, to shush the memories, slow down your emotions until they are so small they can't touch you with they clawed limbs.

“Where is Junhu?” he wonders, looking at the disaster that is your place – you, who have always been tidy and clean and resolute.

“With my parents. In my state? It’s the best I could do for him. I don’t want him around when I disappear,” you say firmly despite that your voice comes out sluggish and callused, out of use. Seunghoon pushes you to the shower, he washes out the hangover and the residual suicidal thought with soap and conversation,  helps you eat something after days feeding yourself with liquor and resentment and self-loath. And, with him, you begin to feel better, his company, still unwelcome, a blessing for he helps you with your own struggles and makes you realize that you are not alone in the world - that there are others feeling the same way, fighting down their own demons and, therefore, you ought to do the same, for your sake and Junhu's and for the promise you once made to your sister to always look after yourself.

It takes four weeks to be back on track, to be yourself again. It takes a lot of courage and patience and kindness from Seunghoon, who has stayed with you, has helped you come out of your shell of spite and hate and fears. He has been there to watch out for you, has taken his time to heal you and you find yourself bounding with him, sharing the same painful experiences and the endless journey of overcoming, of getting better, of recovery. He has walked the same steps before – when he lost his parents, after all the children he couldn’t help and, yet, he is still trying, he is still thriving, not letting pain win over.

You find yourself admiring him once the bitterness subdues, you encounter in him more than a friend – more than you could have expected: your source of strength, the resolution you lacked, the voice of your conscience.

He comes to you as a clean slate, a new beginning that you don’t deserve – not after all your dark thought and feelings, after the animosity, after all the yelling and blaming and insulting you have performed in front of him. But, even then, he takes you as you are, doesn’t mind what you have done, forgives you for spiraling down in a whirl of desolation and discomfort.

It takes four weeks for Junhu to be back, too. He, like you, has fought his own battle, has walked his own grief, missing his mother, his twin, you. He has kicked and threw tantrums at your parents, screaming that he wanted to be with you and you finally gave in despite that family is now a different concept, even if seeing him sorrows you. You welcome him with a tight hug, his little frame swirling in your arms, his smell melting away your regrets, his wavering smile tricking your heart - and you mirror him, grinning big to a new beginning.

Seunghoon stays with you more often than not, even when you feel much better. He stays now for the laughter that Junhu provides, always messing and joking, always a ball of joy, climbing to your arms, cuddling you with his head filled with stars- He stays for the good company that he says you are - for your amiability, your bright smile, your hand-made dinners that always end with movies on the couch and popcorn all over your clothes, - for the shared memories that haunt you but don’t sink you down anymore. He stays holding your hand, your head on his shoulder, his name mumbled before you fall asleep, leaning on him again.

He stays for dinner after a long surgery that has been successful and you celebrate with him his achievement. You kiss him then, seeing him beaming, smiling at you. You kiss him and you stop feeling – you only feel his lips on your mouth, the grinning stretching until reaching him whole. Sweet, slow, longing, you kiss him with care, unsure even when Seunghoon holds you by the nape, his hands everywhere, assuring you that this is very much appreciated. And you close your eyes and see nothing but the sweetness of Seunghoon, of his endless love and support, how much he has done, how he was the redemption you sought.