My Time Remembered - A Fictional Short Story by William DeSouza

My Time Remembered

A Fictional Short Story by William DeSouza

First Published in 2004

He sat at his desk thinking about life, his life in particular. A cup of tea still fresh and steaming in his hands. Leaning back in his chair, the swivels and springs creaking with age, he closed his eyes as visions of past memories danced in his head.

Images of family, friends and strangers mixed with dreams, hopes and fears all came together in the amalgam that was his life.

It was a good and long life he thought with few regrets.

The light from the sun streaming through the bay window of his study fell on his face, the sensation felt warm on his skin. The sounds of children playing outside helped to put him in the mood to work, reminding him of the task he had set out to accomplish.

He had put out several old photo albums and at least five produce size boxes of loose photos and clippings from newspapers and magazines, all of which he wanted to use somehow in this project. Pictures and stories that spanned a lifetime were sprawled out on the large, but otherwise clean and tidy desk.

Opening his eyes and turning to his son sitting beside him in an arm chair, he asked in an almost child like enthusiasm, "So? How do you want to start this then?"

"Its your life dad, how did it start?"

"I was born...."

His son cocked an eyebrow and gave his father a quizzical look.

Responding quickly to his sons overly skeptical glare, "Well I was born ya know!"

"I'm not disputing that part." A thin smile beginning to form, "But do you really want to begin your life story like that?"

Thinking for only a split second, "If its good enough for Clinton, its good enough for me."

He placed the teacup down gently in its saucer and crossed his arms, determined to have his way.

He paused again to think and reflect in more detail about his long life. The wrinkles in his brow thin and hardly showing, laugh lines around his eyes and cheeks creasing only slightly as he smiled. At eighty-three he was in pretty good health and physical condition and he was proud of that.

Age, he always said, was nothing more than how old you felt inside. If you felt young, your mind and body would work together to keep you young.

He had lived a long and interesting life, but had never talked about it much. It was always the past to many people. Some used to tell him to forget the past and embrace the future.

"What do you know," he used to tell them. "Once you're dead - the past is all you had. So better make sure it’s a good one. Folks remember you from your past, not your future."

Now he thought, was the perfect time to put pen to paper and record his past for prosperity, and my children and their children.

He wanted to leave them something different, something that was part of himself. He wanted to give them a future by showing them their past. He didn't think he was going anywhere, but at eighty-three, he didn't want to put it off.

His son asked softly, "Look dad, why now of all times do you want to write a book?"

Without answering directly, the old man quickly changed the subject by picking up a stack of loose photos and newspaper cut outs. He shuffled through them, turning them over, flipping some that were upside-down. He would cock his head to the left when he came across something he didn't recognize.

His son was from what he called the fast food generation. If it didn't happen in less than one minute, it took too long. He thought that any baby boomer was part of that generation. The old man knew he was driving his son crazy by taking his time.

"I remember them." He said at last, an audible sigh being heard from his son.

He was pointing to an old newspaper clipping on the top of the stack showing three boys on a makeshift raft. Each boy holding a pole that reached into a small creak as they pushed their way along.

He took the clipping in his left hand and quietly replaced the rest on the table. The newsprint was old and crinkled to the touch. The edges were neatly cut, and only slightly brown with age, the date was hand written in faded green ink and showed July 17, 1937.

"I was sixteen then." He said, pausing. "It was two months before I joined up and Stinky Trotman and two of his friends decided they were pirates on the high seas. I remember the reporter wanted to get some photos of logging and millwork in the area at the time. It was a week after a strike at the mill..."

His son held up his hand, palm out to say 'hold on a second'. "Ah - Dad, what does that have to do with Stinky Trotman? And who names their kid Stinky?"

"It's nothing to do with Stinky - I was creating a seen in the readers head. Stinky wasn't his real name either, just what we called him." He said it without missing a beat. His son could only shake his head and smile.

"Any way, where was I?" Pausing again, "Oh yes - So this reporter, taking stills, saw Stinky on the creak and came over to take the picture. An interest piece I think he said. I had only just arrived so I never was part of the pirate crew. Too bad though, the picture was published the next day in the paper. I could've been famous." He laughed.

His voice was soft but clear as he remembered the events in the picture, as if it happened that week.

His son had quietly taken out a digital voice recorder and placed it on the table, turning the mike in his father’s direction and pressing the record button. He didn't want to miss a word - he was always amazed at the rich and varied history that was involved in his father's life.

"Let's try something dad, what were your earliest memories as a child?"

The old man closed his eyes again. Disjointed images started to swim around his mind, threatening to overwhelm him.

Then, "Your grandmother at the market - we always went to market on Saturday. You would be amazed at the smells. You could begin to smell the market from the train station five blocks away. Horses, livestock, exotic foods cooking, smoke from the cooking and heating fires..."

He smiled and breathed in deeply, as if he was there right now. Smell was a powerful sense, especially strong and pungent odors. Being able to trigger forceful memories it had a tremendous affect on ones ability to recall events.

The old man continued, "As we neared the market we would pass venders selling flowers, trinkets and medicines not found anywhere else but could cure everything. Horse drawn carts were lined up four to six deep on the streets and everyone moved with purpose, or chatted with merchants."

The old man picked up his cup and drank.

His son took the break to ask, "You did a lot with grandma didn't you? I wish I had been able to meet her."

"You would've been hard pressed to keep up with her. I was devastated when she died, but I had to keep going."

"That was 1940 wasn't it?" He didn't want to ask at first.

He knew that even after so many decades his grandmother's death was still painful for his father.

"It was - I was in England then with my regiment about to ship out to Italy. We were knee deep in it and it took two months for the mail to reach me with news of her death."

The old man's body language changed abruptly as he straightened himself in the chair. As if an emotional shield was suddenly draped over the psyche, allowing him to speak about it but protect him at the same time.

"My father's letter threw me for a loop, I didn't know what to think. Part of me wanted to run home and part wanted to bury my head in the sand. My dad gave me the answer though. He said to stay and fight. To never surrender - to never give up."

He opened his eyes and looked at his son before continuing. "He said your grandmother was proud of what I was doing and her dying was not as important as what was happening."

His son interrupted and asked, "How did she die?"

He regretted the question as soon as he asked it.

"Pneumonia - She had been struck ill with the flu and her constitution was not strong enough to fight it off."

Then the old man did something his son did not expect; he smiled, giggling slightly before going on.

"It's funny to think about it now, her dying not being as important as the war. She was a wise women, and strong. She made me realize at that time what I was doing and how important it was on a larger scale."

His son stood and walked quietly over to a side table, pouring himself another cup of coffee from an urn. He didn't want to interrupt.

"The war for me, at first anyway, was excitement and adventure."

The memories were vivid, clear, and came flooding back.

"It was a means to an end - a way to get out from the routine that was life in Ottawa. Over there it was an adventure, another world. Oh I'd heard the stories of those that went to France during the First World War - and part of me believed the horror, but another side of me still saw it as exciting."

The old man chuckled to himself, and turned toward his son. "The young can be silly and foolish, and we were all young once. My mother, in thinking the war was more important than her made me take stock of my attitudes. It was at that moment I realized what she meant."

"And what was that?" His son interjected.

"That life and death are more than just about the individual. That the collective is nothing without the individual and the individual is nothing without the collective."

He noticed the confused look on his son's face. There was a certain amount of satisfaction in that.

"We are so intertwined that madmen like Hitler and Mussolini, no matter what their stated aims, cause irreparable harm to the collective and thus the individual and must be stopped. I was more determined than ever to be part of the war effort to stop them. I did miss her, but I also knew what I had to do and I knew she would understand. We shipped out a week later."

His son was beginning to understand the need for his father to write this book. He never heard his dad talk about the past as candid and openly as he is now.

It was not just about family, it was about the collective good. It was about remembering our struggles, and our mistakes in an effort to avoid the same mistakes. It was an effort to recall the good things in life as much as it was to be remembered for your efforts in life. His father's exploits during the war, the friends he lost, the friends he met, on both sides, helped to shape who he became; and as his son by extension, who he is today.

"I think I know the answer already, but what is your most vivid recollection during that time? You spent time in Northern Africa and in Europe, didn't you?"

"I did - the first eighteen months in North Africa. Sweating during the day and freezing at night. We lost more troops during that campaign than at any other time. There was never any cover for the tanks and the big eighty-eights picked us off one by one. I lost a lot of friends during that period. By the time we arrived in France most of the really heavy fighting was over."

"When and how did you meet mom?" He had a lot of material from the war years from diaries and letters his father had saved, so there was no point in spending too much time re-hashing it.

"In England when our unit was pulled back from the front. The war was winding down and after all our kit was cleaned we had a lot of free time. I was site seeing with some mates in the high street and I spotted her having a sandwich lunch on a bench. My friends kept egging me on to say something to her. I can still remember he dark red skirt and white blouse, her white wool sweater."

He couldn't help not remembering the first time he met Elizabeth. It was as if they both knew each other prior. A shared existence in another life, karma, fate, call it what you will, they hit it off from the beginning.

The old man continued to remember and as he spoke, his visions and smile only expanded, filling him with happiness and joy. From his marriage to Elizabeth, the birth of his first child, another war in Korea, it was all relived in the next three hours. Both he and his son lost track of time, and in a way that was what this was all about.

Time didn't matter; it was living that really mattered. Living out the time you had in a way that gave you satisfaction and affected those around you in an equally positive manner.

It took two months, but the old man finally finished his book. He was sitting on the front porch, swinging gently. The summer heat was causing a shimmer in the distance and only a slight breeze blew the leaves on the big maple tree on the front lawn. His grandchildren played a game of tag while their parents, also sitting on the porch, spoke of events past and wishes still to come as they prepared for a BBQ supper.

He just finished reading the final page of the final draft of his book, and as he closed the manuscript he smiled. It was a good book and his family was proud of him. One publisher had already signed a contract and for the first time in his long life, he knew he could rest. He had nothing else to prove or accomplish. For his time remembered would now be handed down to his children and grandchildren. The legacy of his past would become their future.