I remember the gun ships the old lady says to be me. She is elderly and frail, rests her Styrofoam cup half full of coffee on the black broken handle grip of her walker as she sits in the chair across from me…her hands shakes with tremors and the coffee threatens to spill over the rim. She has steely eyes that suggest clarity of faculty, even if her body is decaying and failing faster than she will admit…the tone of her voice and choice of words demonstrates her wit and resilience and you are immediately aware that she is a fighter, that she has always been a fighter. The police, she continues, would come here at the end of summer to take the children. They would bring their skiffs right up on the white sand there, she says pointing out my window to the beach down by the dock. She laughs uncomfortably, we would run from them and try to hide…she pauses and remembers, I was always so scared and afraid, then pauses again and after a moment adds…my mom would cry too. They would take us for the winter. That’s an important time for us, you know…and looks at me for emphasis, then away…but they didn’t care. They took us to residential school, just took us and weren’t allowed speak our language…they would beat us with sticks…the ladies were the meanest. I would always run away she adds defiantly, but the older boys would be sent to find me and they would be angry with me…but I didn’t care. The old lady shifts in her chair and places the Styrofoam cup of coffee on my desk and takes a scrunched clothe handkerchief buried inside of one her sleeves. With both hands she fumbles with it, finally opening it and then refolds it neatly in halves…preparing. My father and brother died while I was away the winter I was eight, she says and rubs her fragile fingers together over the handkerchief…they died when their fishing boat turned over in a storm. When I got home in the spring they had been gone for three months, already buried and everything…for the first time her voice trembles slightly…I was very sad and I cried for many days. That was the hardest thing I ever experienced in my life she tells me…then scrunches up the neatly folder handkerchief and tucks it back insider her sleeve, retrieves her coffee from my desk and as she prepares to leave adds…can you believe they just took us like that? They wrecked us…it’s an awful thing they did, but I don’t cry anymore…I got no more tears.
Photo by Lawrence Lewis (June 2012)
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Lawrence Lewis
“If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.” – William Butler Yeats
About Lawrence Lewis
I do a number of things professionally...but most of all and the true purpose of what I do through "my work" is to provide for my family, be a good husband and great father, and try to make a difference as a world citizen...I guess it's not much more complicated than that 🙂