To live is to remember the unreal

The boy was shivering, afraid of the unknown whiteness surrounding them. Where are they, and how is father so calm? How is he not cold? The boy had many questions. His father offered a hug in hopes of warming the boy, but it did not help.

“Is this a dream?” the boy asked, his father quickly rejecting the idea.

“Are we dead?” the boy offered a new explanation. This time, the father took a moment before answering.

“Yes. Dead, or dying”

“Are we in heaven?” the boy wondered.

“No, not yet.” The father is still calm. Seeing his boy scared and cold, the father offered a solution:

“Let’s imagine some warm place. I will tell you what I see, and you imagine it with me. I stand by the sea, gazing at a girl clumsily folding a newspaper, trying to read something at the bottom of the page. The sand beneath my feet burns, forcing me to move, but I fear if I take a step, I’d be moving towards her; I see nothing else around.” As the father painted the scene before his eyes, the boy started noticing all the details mentioned. Above all, he relished the warmth of the seaside, unwilling to part with this vision.

“Tell me more, Dad, tell me more,” the boy pleaded, with childlike eagerness.

“I see peaches everywhere I look. She’s eating them, consuming them in an odd way, as if she’s angry at them, not something else. Juice trickles down her chin, and her face is so tender. Can you see her?” The boy asked him to keep describing the scenery, still enjoying the warmth.

“What do you hear, dad?”

“Waves. Waves and cypresses. They both got tangled in her ashen blond hair. When she looks at me from a distance, I still can see her Byzantine-blue eyes” The father’s gentle description of this woman was akin to the boy’s earliest memory of his mother. He felt his heart racing, before asking: “Is this… mom?”

“Yes! Yes!” his father suddenly got excited. “Can you see her, son, tell your dad, can you see her?”

“Crystal clear!” the boy giggled.

“What is she doing now, can you tell me?” the father inquired, testing the boy.

“She’s trying to scratch her left foot with her right!” the boy answered the impossible question. This father’s memory is older than the boy himself.

“To live is to remember the unreal!” the father said to the visibly confused son, “if you can see something you did not witness, there is still hope for you! Tell me, son, how did we get here? You were asleep in the car when it all happened, but tell me, how did we get here?

The boy gave this question a long thought before proceeding to answer, his awareness aiding.