Without Hope We Are Realistic

Even now, after all these years, I can still recall that pivotal afternoon which marked the most significant change in my life. I can still remember the hot, stifling air of a late summer's day that weighed down so heavily on the parched grass and the crowd of people brought together in torment. I can still see the red crumbling earth that delineated the edges – too straight, too sharp – of the deep, seemingly bottomless, cavity that bit into the ground. Equally as vividly, I can also see the starkly contrasting white of the tiny coffin – so small surely it couldn't contain a body – that rested just above the hungry mouth that waited, too eagerly, to swallow it. I can still hear the minister's final words of farewell that filled my ears but made no sense. And, all too clearly, I can remember the seemingly innocuous touch of a button that signalled the beginning of the coffin's descent into the eternal embrace of Mother Earth. As the white lid of the coffin disappeared forever from my sight, something broke within my soul and my illusions of hope were forever shattered. It was in that moment that I realised that Mac was truly dead and that I would never see her again.

It was in that moment that all the fantasies of enduring dreams and colourful hopes melted away to reveal the cold starkness that is reality. I realised that nothing that had gone before had been real: not the charming enthusiasms of childhood; not the innocent conversations of "when we're older"; not the sharing of future dreams; not the carefree playing on sunny afternoons down at the creek. None of it had been real and none of it ultimately mattered. All it had been was nothing more than a foolish attempt to delude myself into believing that hope could be more than an empty word echoing hollowly within my heart. Now I faced reality and I knew, unconsciously, that I would never be able to retreat to the false security of comfortable delusions again.

This rending of my illusions was violent and abrupt and I tried desperately to hold onto the disintegrating fragments of what I had once believed. I was afraid to accept this new truth for what it was; I wanted to keep my hope. However, Mac's death was only the first that year and so I soon came to accept, albeit reluctantly, that reality was a harsh fact and that hope belonged only in the realm of dreams.

In the years that have passed I have sometimes weakened and allowed myself some small hopes: hope that I will not be betrayed; hope that people will accept me for who I am; hope that I will escape the shadows of death. Ultimately, it has been my misfortune that these hopes too have been rendered asunder by the intrusion of undeniable reality.

Now I go on, facing each day as it is. I accept reality for what it is and do not attempt to clothe it in the borrowed robes of hope. What was will never be again.

Still, on some nights when the world is quiet I feel the stirrings of some small hope in a distant corner of my soul and I turn around, expecting Mac to be standing there. Maybe, one day…

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Without Hope We Are Realistic

Mangled Avocado. © 2003 by Brodiss. All Rights reserved.