“The Gita,” she says, surprised. They have a copy just like the one she is holding at home, or at least they used to.
He sits back down. “I had to study it during yoga teachers’ training. But I found myself going back to certain parts when I was grieving and searching for answers. I’ve marked off some of the passages that spoke to me.”
Kavita sets her eyes on the first passage and starts reading aloud. “‘Our bodies are known to end, but the embodied self is enduring, indestructible, and immeasurable. Therefore Arjuna, fight the battle.’”
She flips to the next passage.
“‘As man discards worn-out clothes to put on new and different ones, so the embodied self discards its worn-out bodies to take on new ones. Weapons do not cut it. Fire does not burn it. Waters do not wet it. Wind does not wither it. It cannot be cut or burned. It cannot be wet or withered. It is enduring, all-pervasive, fixed, immovable, and timeless. It is called unmanifest, inconceivable, and immutable. Since you know that to be so, you should not grieve. If you think of its birth and death as ever-recurring, then too, Great Warrior, you have no cause to grieve. Death is certain for anyone born, and birth is certain for the dead. Since the cycle is inevitable, you have no cause to grieve. Creatures are unmanifest in origin, manifest in the midst of life, and unmanifest again in the end. Since this is so, why do you lament?’”
Falling silent, she lets the words seep in, still unsure of how she feels about them.
“Like I said, it’s is a matter of perspective,” he says. “Of course, that doesn’t make fighting the battle any easier. To physicists, those verses are law. Isn’t that wild? Like it’s written into the universe.”
“I think I’ll read the rest later.”
“We can talk about it next time, if you want. Oh, and don’t forget about the inscription.”
On the front page, she finds a neatly printed paragraph in green ink. “Did you write this?”
He nods, a touch embarrassed.
“A little guru Hawthorn wisdom, is it?”
“No teasing,” he says, “or I’ll banish you from the cult.”
She indulges her grin for another second, then tries to act more serious. “Thank you for lending me the book. But are you sure you don’t need it?”
“I’m sure,” he says. “Besides, I’ll sleep easier knowing you have it close by.”
34.
THROUGHOUT THE WINTER, Kavita’s days began reshaping themselves as her friend foretold. Once a month, she went to group and met Hawthorn there. Although she asked Nirav to come to the meetings too, he would tell her, “I don’t need therapy, but you go, it’ll be good for you,” and stayed home instead.
At group, the faces in the circle revolved like diners at a bistro, survivors drawn by a deeper hunger to understand the senseless. She practised opening up, sharing, and receiving. With the other survivors, among the safety net of hands that caught her when she was sinking, she learned how to speak openly about things long shamed.
They talked about the physical and psychological ravages of grief. The weighty guilt and fiery anger that were often at the heart of a suicide survivor’s grief. They talked about triggers, how to recognize them, how to manage them. They talked about the ripple effects of suicide, the collateral damage. They talked about ways of coping with all these challenges, ways of surviving them. They talked about the slow and steady path back to living. Little by little, Kavita honoured her promise to herself. She was finding a better way.
In the circle, it was true that she encountered the nightmarish, at the centre of the pit where it was tossed, where it churned and settled, and later, got swept away by the janitor. But that wasn’t all. Around the circle, within the brick of people that made its protective wall, she discovered resilience, as primal and resolute as spring, as inured as ancient forces of resurrection. At last, in the church basement, she found a place to belong, and to believe, again.
At home, the distance between herself and Nirav expanded, as if every breath that should have been used for talking went to filling a balloon that was slowly pushing them apart, and on the verge of bursting with things unsaid. The closer she drew to her grief, the further apart they drifted. He started working late almost every night. When they were together, they spent most of their time either in separate rooms or watching television. It seemed like they had wordlessly decided if they wouldn’t talk about what needed to be said, then there was no point in talking at all.
When alone, she studied the little book of verses Hawthorn had loaned her, letting its wisdom seep into her core, into that quiet place she had discovered inside, that dwelling of truth and self. Somehow, the words felt familiar, as if the small, still voice were narrating them, as if they already belonged to her, but she had misplaced them.
Words such as: You grieve for those beyond grief. And you speak words of insight. But learned men do not grieve for the dead or the living.
And: Never have I not existed, nor you, nor these kings. And never in the future shall we cease to exist.
And: The self embodied in the body of every being is indestructible.
Indestructible.
She found herself visiting with Hawthorn’s inscription no less than the verses. The survivor wisdom he had learned himself, expressed in his own words, that she wished she could inscribe onto her insides, so she would always know them, too.
The mountain never changes, he wrote. But my ability to scale its jagged sides does. Some days, I’m young. Some days, I’m an old man. Some days, my boots are thick like tires. On others, they’re iron shackles made of everything that’s gone wrong. Even so, I’ve learned to move forward, if only an infinitesimal amount, known only to me. The breath in my lungs is infused with the same hope of green things, persistent, and ever-seeking even the finest dusting of sunlight. Tenacious as a seed that splits asphalt with its shoots, I will find the light, and grow, another word for: live. This is my destiny. Not suffering.
On Tuesdays and Fridays, she trudged through the snow to attend Hawthorn’s yoga classes. Afterward, they fell into the habit of sitting on bolsters by the expansive bay window, sipping tea and talking. Every week, he revealed a little more of his story.
He had a double Major in Philosophy and Psychology from UBC. Sequoia had studied Fine Arts at Emily Carr. During undergrad, they shared an apartment above an Asian grocery store. During the summer, they earned their tuition by tree planting in the backcountry of northern BC.
He wrote his Honours thesis on the efficacy of art therapy in the treatment of depression and addictions, a project inspired by Sequoia. In truth, it was his way of coaxing her to paint again during a period of rehabilitation she had taken between her third and forth year. When he visited her on the weekends, she taught him about the colour wheel, composition, and the importance of negative space. Over the course of the eight weeks she was in treatment, he noticed her paintings start to shift from dark abstract swirls to saffron-coloured koi fish, symbols of good fortune and prosperity. When her treatment was finished, she enrolled in an out-patient program, moved back in with Hawthorn, and spent the rest of the year exploring new subjects, and taking qualifying courses.
He graduated summa cum laude. Some of his friends were taking a gap year to travel. He wanted to join them but he was worried about leaving Sequoia behind. He asked her to go with him. She wanted to stay and finish her studies.
“Fly little Hawk, fly,” she told him.
Reluctant, he agreed to go without her, although only if her boyfriend—another outpatient—moved into his old room. At the airport, they hugged each, teary-eyed. Until then, other than the time she had spent in rehab, they had never been apart.
He “woofed” his way across parts of Europe—Italy, Greece, Spain—although France turned out to be his favourite. He got into yoga while working at an organic winery in the Burgundy region of France. Every morning, the child
less couple he worked for practised and meditated for an hour before breakfast. In the beginning, he could barely sit still for ten minutes. Soon, though, he got hooked on the stillness, amazed that it was a state he could access all on his own. He thought of Sequoia. Although she wasn’t into granola trends, he hoped it might help her manage her condition.
He returned in time to watch her cross the stage in her cap and gown. Her gaunt and worn appearance—as though there were only the barest of flesh between her skin and her bones—startled him. His parents let him know she had relapsed a week before her final project was due. The stress triggered her old patterns. She hadn’t told him during their weekly phone calls because she didn’t want to ruin his trip. Instantly, he knew it was his fault for leaving her behind.
They moved back to Ottawa and lived with their parents for a while. They got Sequoia on another treatment program waiting list. He started attending yoga classes and researched teacher training courses. She started experimenting with new media—stencils, airbrushes, brick walls. That summer, she painted the mural in their parents’ yard. Its composition burst with meaning as bright as its colours. The kelp forest because of her love of BC. The koi fish because they symbolized good fortune and prosperity, her hopes for the future. Flowers because they were beautiful and carefree and made her smile. At last, she seemed to find her artistic voice, the media and subject matter that made her soul happy. Hawthorn seemed to find his calling, too, in teaching yoga.
For a time, life seemed to slowly spiral upward rather than down. But there were always breaks, times of stopping and shifting, descending and ascending like an Escherian staircase. He had been away again for her last descent, when she let go of the railing altogether. In that instance too, he knew it was his fault for leaving, even though he had gone to the workshop in Costa Rica for her, to learn therapeutic yoga that might have helped her. Part of him knew they weren’t meant to be apart, that together they formed a balanced entity, like the symbol for yin and yang.
Now it is spring. The month of their thirtieth birthday, which coincides with the fragrant bloom of magnolia trees, flowers that, like Sequoia, blossom first and lose their petals too soon.
Hawthorn invited Kavita to his family home to help him with a task he didn’t disclose beforehand.
Sequoia’s mural is the main feature of the yard, filling a large rectangle along the back of the house, above the deck. When she first set eyes on it, Kavita couldn’t pull away from the painting, taken by its colours and movement. It was so much more captivating than she had imagined. Although it clung to a brick wall, it rippled and looped, began and ended, in waves of giant koi that tangled with kelp, kelp that burst with blooms like those tossed at weddings, blooms that transformed into tail fins. While Kavita didn’t know what Sequoia looked like yet, after seeing her work, she got a sense of her likeness. Kavita knew Hawthorn’s sister was beautiful.
Now, as she kneels in the grass, by the edge of Hawthorn’s minor excavation project, Kavita feels dampness seep into her jeans. The air is thick with the fresh scent of mud, that nostril-opening smell of spring. A shower hangs over them in a field of grey clouds that have been gathering raindrops like seeds. They threaten to shed their weight in a distant rumble.
Hawthorn digs into the ground with a trowel. The hole is one foot across and one foot deep. Peering inside, Kavita sees the pink ribbed flesh of a partially excavated earthworm and a few disoriented ants scurrying along the ragged sides of the hole. Shivering, she feels them crawl all over her skin.
“Are you sure this is the right spot?” she asks.
“Positive,” he replies. With a grunt, he loosens another shovel full of earth and rocks. “I can’t imagine we dug much deeper than this.”
Just then, his trowel strikes something hard with a thunk.
“I think I’ve got it,” he says, cautious.
He spears his trowel against the object again. Kavita hears the distinct metallic tap: thunk, thunk.
“Sounds like a tackle box to me,” she smiles.
A bit more digging unearths the handle. Heaving, Hawthorn frees the time capsule from its grave of twenty years. He rests the mint green box on the grass and brushes off most of the dirt.
“Look at this old thing,” he marvels. “It used to be Dad’s. He stored lures in it.”
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
He knits his hands together on his lap. “I know this is why I dragged you here today. But now that we’ve found it, I’m a bit nervous, actually.”
“We can always bury it again if you’ve changed your mind.”
He presses his lips together and nods, debating.
“We made this time capsule when we were ten. We promised each other to wait until we turned thirty to open it. Now that day’s come, but Sequoia isn’t here. I’m not sure I want to look back without her.”
“Ten years old, eh? The world looked so different back then, didn’t it?”
“Do you remember what you wanted to be?”
“A veterinarian. But only to whales.” She lets out a tiny embarrassed laugh. “I don’t know why.”
“What about Sunil?”
“When he was ten, he was obsessed with skateboarding. This one time, he broke his ankle after flying off a ramp at the end of our driveway. He loved basketball, too, though. I remember him saying he would either skateboard professionally or make it in the NBA. Get a scholarship and everything.”
“Did he?”
“No, he outgrew skateboarding. But he did play basketball in high school. Then he got into computers and studied programming. Nothing ever turns out the way we think, I guess. How about you and Sequoia?”
“She always loved to draw. I think she wanted to be a teacher like our parents. I was always changing my mind. But I remember wanting to travel and see the world. I guess that hasn’t changed.”
Kavita shifts off her knees and sits cross-legged and listens to the call and response of chickadees. Somewhere behind them, she hears another faint and distant rumble in the sky, the low rattling of raindrops. As she stares at the tackle box, she wonders about its contents. Maybe a mixed tape? A She-Ra doll? A copy of MAD magazine?
“Enough of this stalling,” he says as he wrenches open the rusted latch. Slowly, he lifts the lid, which screeches with old age.
Kavita keeps her eyes fixed on the clover patch. Somehow looking into the box feels voyeuristic, as though she is about to steel a glimpse of Sequoia’s diary.
“Look at this old stuff.” He pulls out a concert ticket. “About a month before we buried the capsule, Sequoia dragged me to see Corey Hart. I remember hating every minute of it. But it was our first concert.”
Kavita blinks at the ticket stub. She remembers wanting to go to that same concert but being too young. “Sunglasses at Night” plays in her head.
Sensing it’s all right to look, Kavita peers inside the capsule. She sees a Rubik’s cube, a cassette tape, a red egg of Silly Putty, hockey cards, and the white edge of a Polaroid picture. The photograph reminds her of the one Hawthorn asked her to bring of Sunil, if she wanted to, which she has tucked away in the pocket of her jean jacket. As Hawthorn shifts the contents of the box around, she sees two blue envelopes, and winces. Letters, she thinks.
“I’m surprised everything’s so well preserved,” she says, watching his expression. She knows he must have seen the letters by now, too. “That box must’ve been airtight.”
“No water damage,” he mutters. He reaches for the envelopes. “We didn’t write letters to ourselves. We wrote letters to each other.”
She rests one hand on his knee and squeezes.
“I’m not sure I can do this.”
“You don’t have to.”
He hands her one of the letters. “Can you?” His eyes are dark and soft and open. “Please?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to be
the one to read it? It seems like a private thing.”
“You reading it is like me reading it.”
She takes the letter and pauses for a breath. Then she unseals the envelope, little by little, cringing with every tiny tear. Her heart hurts to see Sequoia’s childhood penmanship and the doodles tucked into the corners and along the margin; daisies and swirls and what Kavita presumes is a hawk beside Hawthorn’s name. A bittersweet grin lifts the corners of her mouth.
“‘Dear Hawk,’” she reads aloud, feeling odd for using the nickname she feels is reserved for Sequoia. “‘Happy thirtieth birthday, little brother.’” Three exclamation marks punctuate the end of the sentence, but Kavita can’t find any cheer to liven her tone. “‘By now I bet we both have families and our kids are best friends, just like you and me. I’m a world famous artist and spend half the year in Paris living the life. I bet by now you’ve seen at least half the world. And you’re a famous karate master. And an Olympian. We rock.’”
“Oh my God,” he interrupts. “I was obsessed with The Karate Kid back then. I can’t believe I forgot about that. Sorry, go on.”
After a moment, she finds her place again. “‘If we haven’t been to California yet to see the redwoods, please take me there for my birthday present this year. If you do, I promise to take you to Disneyland. Love, your big sister, Sequoia.’” Beside her signature, a drawing of a tree. Lowering the letter, Kavita remains silent, as she gently chews the side of her tongue and waits for Hawthorn to speak.
“I forgot about the redwoods. They’re her namesake.”
“Did she ever get to see them?”
“We always meant to go. We were so close, too, when we lived out in BC for all those years. But we never found the right time.”
She hands him the letter and envelope. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” He slips the letter back into its envelope. “It’s no one’s fault. It just makes me sad.”
Side by Side Page 22