Neurogenic Shock.
As the plane crashed, she understood what people said about remembering your life.
It was a shame then, that she made nothing of hers. Sure, memories sparked across her eyes as the hull burst open crawling her lungs apart on every inhale.
The shutter of the viewmaster matches the closing of my eyes, a terrible was to view memories. Rapid and without context, only a still in time.
The memory of her family, gathered around a TV waiting for anything to fill the silence; how she tried and was banished to the kitchen. Her sister found her there and apologized but it was not her blunder to make up for…we often apologized for them. The first time it happened to my sister I scolded my parents only to be hit back with my own ineptitude, I didn’t speak up after that. Neither did she.
It didn’t stop, even with our neutrality. My sister and I would exist in a way my parents couldn’t stand and be made lame by their insults until we could comfort one another in the aftermath.
A child screams as they are ejected into the cold. Someone, their parent falls after them. An attendant, who ended up in the seat beside me, puts the oxygen mask over my mouth. I’m crying and their saving my life.
That’s the funny thing about memories, once you call them forward, they ricochet off all your synapses until your head bows in respect and takes the onslaught.
Memories of two young girls and their parents who loved them and swung their arms in the wind of the summer. Smiles distorting their faces and then a click. The play is over and the sisters are abandoned. It’s hard to picture a time without cameras and these snippets of what love could be. That’s probably why I visit them every month, like a recovering alcoholic offered their favourite drink. Maybe if I behave, it’ll last longer? Maybe if I smile in the right way and keep my mouth shut, their love will flow more freely? If not for me then for my sister.
I watch as the front of the plane separates from the back and it almost feels like we are flying straight again, as though the pilots were setting us off course. No turbulence, no sounds, just harsh wind pushing the front seats down and raking the rest of us with a softer breeze.
