sprinkles on toast

It feels a bit funny not to acknowledge a certain anniversary. I think part of me never wants to but it is as if my body knows every year, and sometimes at other parts of the year, but particularly like clockwork at this time of the year. I suppose this explains why I have never bothered to remember the actual date, though I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to look up. Also, there's also confusion about which date to remember...the date of the accident when he probably was brain dead, or the date of actual death, or the date of the funeral or the date of the memorial service. I suppose the actual death one makes the most sense, but I have never bothered to remember. It is funny how my body always seems to know.

When I was in Den Haag...my body knew. I say my body and not my brain or my heart because it feels like all of me knew...except my brain: it seemed to be somewhere else, rationalizing something else, trying its best to think about something else. My heart too, just felt numb or pained; it is as if there was too much jumbled up there to make any sense, but my body knew. My body knew and I could feel it in my tight chest, in my shaky shoulders, in my stiff neck, in my unsettled stomach, in my wobbly legs and in my feet that felt set in concrete. My body knew, I do not know how, but my body knew in Den Haag and even before, but in Den Haag my body knew when I looked at the three boxes of sprinkles generously laid out on each breakfast table in the hostel. My body knew. I fortunately had decided to come down for the last 5 minutes of breakfast, choosing this obscure corner of the room facing no one else, and my body knew. My shoulders hunched over, my stomach churned, my legs felt like rocks. Pools flooded from my eyes, and my brain tried to shut them off. I knew, it was today...or near today...six years ago.

My brain finally decided to give in, and tried to perform a little ritual, a commemoration. My brother once marveled at the Dutch custom of eating toast with sprinkles...so here I am in the Netherlands trying to do just that. Trying: I tried to stick the sprinkles on the toast but they just kept falling off. Shake, shake! And off they would go...they never quite stuck and my eyes were too full of tears for me to ask someone. My heart wanted to ask no one; I wanted to figure it out myself...but instead I made a mess all over my tray. Wasted chocolate sprinkles. Somehow my body knew and somehow my heart is awakening, ambivalent about being woken up...

To you, my dear brother in paradise. To you.