WHO AM I?
At the foundation of everything anyone has ever done ever is some permutation of that question… Every single time I ask myself that question, in every way I ask that question I change the answer and I ask myself that question a lot. More than I care to admit. A minimum of 100 times a day I think to myself, what do I want for dinner? Should I flirt with this pretty girl? Should I get coffee at the local place and support independently owned business or the chain where the wifi is good and the coffee is cheap? All formulated answers, however inconsequential align like brush strokes on a canvas and give shape to the image I am in a constant state of being rendered into. It is the never formed idea of self that gives chase to any illusions I have correctly or incorrectly held onto concerning my identity. An idea that will ultimately empower me to thrive or implode.
It isn’t something that comes to the surface often. It lurks just beneath consciousness but is manifest in every action taken. Every time is A chosen over B, decisions become actions that define who I truly am. This is the instinct of self, poking around in my waking life and it can be as elusive and destructive as it is beautiful and rewarding. Blown off course by circumstance and adversity, the winds tearing at my sails, a question whispers from a deep place in my mind, “who are you” and in the seeking of this truth I can often find feet and right my compass. Whether or not we are aware of it, this fact is universal. Who you are and who you want to be can be extrapolated through simple analysis of your decisions.
I wasn't conscious that I was asking myself that question when I walked into the train station on a lazy Saturday. The grey London skies had weighed on the city for so long that when an orange dawn faded into a deep blue summer sky, I felt a compulsion to walk aimlessly through the city that had only recently adopted me. As I wandered in and out of shops along whatever street I was on, I found myself in the hustle of Victoria Station. The boards above the platforms flashed destinations and departures, so giving in to the pull of summer I had a sudden impulse to be near the sea. “I think I want to go to Brighton.”
I was born a Californian after all and the gradually changing seasons had caused a twinging homesickness. So on a whim and without a plan I bought a ticket. I plopped next to a window where I contentedly watched the green english countryside go by.
My family, 5,000 miles away must have been sleeping or on their way home from a night out. It was 2:30 AM in Culver City California, but they wandered in and out of my thoughts, between daydreams and memories. I was an American living in England, an expatriate. Which was exciting. It was cool to be a novelty to random people on a regular basis. My accent was a frequent topic of conversation, which meant that to a lot of people in the UK, I was pronouncing everything wrong.
To me though as a new comer, the city of London seemed almost magical. Seamlessly accommodating both its ancient history and its modernity.
It had only been 6 months since my winter arrival and the short summer was just beginning. The temperature was climbing into the upper 60’s lower 70’s and that was about where it would remain until late August when the Autumn would begin creeping in.
In LA, the summer meant outdoor movies, long hikes up mountains and back and above all going to the beach. Planting an umbrella and cooler firmly in the sand where me and my friends could lie. Sun soaked and sandy, occasionally venturing out to swim in the shallows just clear of the surfers bobbing up and down, waiting patiently to vie for the perfect wave. Summer was beer in a cozy and cocktails out of opaque water bottles in the hopes of avoiding fines for having booze on the beach. That was the summer I was looking for that day on the train.
I stepped out of the station into a misting rain that left a heavy dew on everything. The blue skies of London had become a grey drizzle out on the coast. In less than 3 blocks of walking towards what I thought might be the direction of the shore my thin shirt was wetted through. My favorite converse were becoming saturated such that by the time I made to actual beach after several wrong turns, I was soaked to my socks.
The beach at Brighton which runs along a small portion of the western coast of the English Channel would seem unfamiliar to those accustomed to the beaches of southern California. The land that runs into the sea is covered with dull weathered stones rather than sand and though they are not unpleasant to walk on they seemed much less comfortable for laying out. Particularly when there is a persistent rain. There was an old abandoned pier that had been burned down to timbers. It sat within view of the “modern” pier, almost to remind anyone trying to enjoy themselves that nothing lasts forever. I walked aimlessly from the shore, hoping eventually to arrive back at the station, resigned to simply be wet if it couldn’t be helped and make any effort to find some kind of nostalgia. Rather than quench my desire to feel a bit of home though, it brought into sharp relief just how much I missed the sunshine. I wanted so badly to be home, even if just for the afternoon.
I was on contract at the moment, and would have to be in the UK for at least the next 3 years. I had taken the assignment knowing full well my trips home would be sporadic and infrequent but had been desperate to live abroad. So as my nostalgia turned to melancholy I decided to find a pub where I could dry out, wait for the rain to slow and have pint or two. Brighton is a bit like Santa Monica in that tourists love it more than the residents probably do. As a result much of it is designed to accommodate strangers rather than neighbors. The pubs I came across were chain pubs that, while inexpensive lacked the character I had hoped for. Keeping with the theme of the day though which was compromise, I walked into the least cheesy of them I could find.
It was warm inside and the man tending bar had a pleasant smile so as I sat down near a window my mood began to improve. I sipped slowly and watched people passing. As I got closer to the bottom of my beer, I began to reflect about the path I had taken to arrive at this place with these people. A group of older gentleman were laughing which added to the atmosphere and as the next half an hour slipped by I realized that I was rather enjoying having a pint in a pub near the shore on a rainy day. By that time the day was beginning to wind down and I knew at least one person in my family would be up. I sent them a picture of the burned down pier in the rain. “Beautiful day at the beach” was the caption. I sent them a picture of the beer silhouetted against the window as well. “I am still enjoying myself though,” I texted as I went to the bar to order another. I expected to have a response from a parent or one of my sisters before I returned to my table, but by the time I left the pub an hour later I had not heard a thing. Walking back to the train station now in the false early dusk of an overcast sky I knew that one of them had to be awake. I had 3 younger sisters and they were all night owls like me so they also liked to sleep in. But it was 10 in the morning there, between the 3 of them and my parents, they could not all be sleeping. “Test… test…” I tapped out on my screen as I got back on the train. Service was spotty going through the countryside so I put my phone away and watched the fields and towns pass as the afternoon grew closer to evening.
The ever lower sun was reaching out from the horizon leaving long shadows across the sidewalk as I walked out of the station onto a busy London street. I was meeting with friends for a late dinner so I turned in the direction of home to get clean and warm up, but several steps out of the station I saw it. Printed large on the headlines of an evening edition. “THE BIG ONE: LOS ANGELES REELING FROM MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE”
I immediately went light headed. Splayed across the front page were words and pictures describing the devastation. The pictures were color, all highlighting the damage. The Capitol Records building crumbled, the top of the Ferris Wheel jutting out from the water where the pier in Santa Monica had collapsed. Mansions above Hollywood shook loose from their perches on the hills had tumbled into the valley below. And somewhere in that mess of destruction was a family. Three girls and their parents who had been sleeping quietly when the earth moved under them rippling across a continent and an ocean knocking me off of my feet.
I struggled for what seemed like minutes to stand. It felt like my feet might never trust the ground again. While strangers helped me up, my head began to spin with the possibilities. They may all be perfectly fine, the rubble and ruin in these pictures might have spared any number of lives. Once standing I collected myself and took off at a run toward my flat to use whatever means of communication I could to try and find them.
I called number after number but every line ended with an invitation to leave a voicemail or a polite pre recorded voice claiming that the line was not currently in service. I could not even begin to understand but I had to be there. I began searching for flights.
That morning I had stood on a rocky beach looking out towards France across a narrow strip of water and wished I could feel the sand of a California beach between my toes. The tide on a California beach as on many others, erodes the sand out from underfoot while you stand there. As the ocean takes more and more of the earth back out into the water, eventually the place you are standing begins to sink. When the tide has retreated, the ground has changed underneath you, transformed even as you stood still. I had started the day as a man who was homesick and in less than twelve hours who I was had changed dramatically. I was someone whose home might have been taken from him. I hadn’t moved but I was standing somewhere else entirely. Who am I?
I packed quickly and headed to the airport, I was not going to sit half a world away while the people I love the most had not even been able to tell me they are all right. At 8:30 PM on a wet Saturday evening I left London for California for the first time.
The international terminal had been organized neatly according to people who needed to deal with travel to LA and everyone else. The small chaotic crowd was being funneled into one line leading to a makeshift info center where someone from every airline had been assigned to deal with the onslaught. There were people who either no longer wanted to go LA or people who were desperate to get there. It was the Europeans that had made plans to travel to LA that were being asked to wait, while those who had homes in LA were being given priority. I didn’t fit fully into either of those categories. So I stayed in the line and hoped that I could get on any plane going anywhere near the west coast.
My panic was coming in waves, the ebb and flow of hope and despair would set me right on the edge of a full blown panic and then slowly bring me back. Every new fact I learned was a challenge to digest without breakdown. The epicenter was Porter Ranch outside of Simi Valley. It was registering as an astounding 8.8 and the aftershocks were frequent. All freeways were either closed completely or being used for emergency services only. The 405 through the pass was completely closed, and the 101 through downtown. The major studios were allowing their backlots and empty stages that still stood to be used as Red Cross centers. All new information made the reality more tangible.
The BBC broadcasts that were on every TV in the terminal had confirmed almost all utilities had been taken out, and that included water, power, broadband and mobile phone service, so as the line trudged on I kept reminding myself of that. They have no internet, their phones don’t work.
The woman at the counter smiled warmly, but the red in her eyes belied her cheery demeanor giving away the fact that she’d probably been at that counter longer than she had been scheduled.
“If you want to leave immediately you’ll have to go a bit farther out, Seattle or Portland maybe. All airports are backed up 2 -3 days as far out as Salt Lake.”
“Is there any way to get anywhere?” My voice cracked. “I would take Salt Lake, I haven’t heard from anyone in my family since yesterday.”
Her eyes were deep auburn and she looked at me directly and with genuine concern.
"There's nothing for Salt Lake until early the day after tomorrow, but there you can rent a car. With the drive it would be a couple days total travel. But we could get you out to Boise, Idaho first thing tomorrow morning. There is a flight at 7:30 AM. A longish layover in Minneapolis and then Boise by 16:30 local time.”
"Nothing closer at all?"
She shook her head. "Standby only."
That could work, I would only be a 12 hour drive away from LA so I could potentially be there in less than 48 hours.
“Thank you.” I said, as she led me to the booking agent for that airline and returned to her station to argue with a family from Leeds about getting a refund on their vacation.
In the late night hours between the booking and my flight I wandered the terminal wanting to sleep but scared that I might sleep through the boarding announcement I struggled through the exhaustion. Around 3 AM I found a bathroom where I was spontaneously overwhelmed. I could only sit in a locked stall and cry. I cried for what felt like an eternity but was really about 15 minutes. It was a deep cry, a cry that expresses fear and anger and sadness and felt like it might never end. It was the kind of crying that shakes the whole body. That feels hot around your eyes and makes seeing difficult. Through the tears I could see a hundred different futures. I thought about what I might have to do if they had all died. If the earth had opened it’s mouth, indifferent to the lives that so desperately need it to be still and decided to move. Moved so violently that it swallowed the people most dear to me. That is too many funerals. The spaces in my life where I once had Christmas trees and cinnamon rolls and big bear hugs would be empty and the holes left behind would be too immense to ever fill again.
I let the wave of emotion wash over me until it finally began to recede and I could collect myself enough to stand and exit. I continued to wander the airport through the night, watching flight after flight departing and arriving to and from parts of the world I could only imagine. I thought about my family, what they might be doing in their part of the world.
The flight was long so I tried to sleep but I barely managed. I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing my home, the one where I grew into an adult, in a pile of rubble. It was an old LA home which meant it was built in the 1920’s. It was red brick with a tall chimney connected to a fireplace that was only used on Christmas eve to roast marshmallows.
I could see it now in my imagination, heaps of red brick lying heavy on top of my old bedroom, the tomb that would forever contain baby pictures and little league trophies, everything that gave shape to my identity and made clear who I was.
The plane landed in Minneapolis and walking off the plane, I realized that my phone had died. It hadn’t been charged since I left for Brighton and in my haze I had not charged it while in the air. I went through customs collected and rechecked my bags and found the nearest outlet. After powering on, I got the usual messages from my carrier about roaming. Strange to be roaming in your own country, but then a message. It was an unknown number but it was from Los Angeles. A 310 area code.
“This is Chuck. Thing’s are bad… where are you? Text or call this number.” My sister is named Charlotte but we call her Chuck. She was the baby, about to turn 13. I don’t know how she was able to call or whose phone she was using or how she remembered my UK number, but the relief was immediate. Every emotion I had succeeded in corralling and resisting since I left London, flooded back simply by knowing that one of my sisters had survived. It felt like air suddenly rushing back into the world. I knew that even if everything else was gone I would not be alone. I cried again. It was the kind crying that expresses happiness and relief. I laughed as well letting every wave of emotion quickly wash over me. Each cresting and falling until there was nothing that I could do except to indulge. As the tsunami crashed down on me, I realized I needed to find my connecting gate and get something to eat, so I collected myself and called.
“Hello,” it was a mans voice on the phone. One I didn’t recognize.
“This is Jay, my sister Chuck texted me from this number.”
There was pause.
“Ok, yes. She is here, she is safe. Very shaken up but safe. Let me find her”
There was a long pause and then she was there.
“Mom is gone, people are still trying to find Joanne and Jamie they were out way past curfew and dad was freaking out, but dad is here but they say he is critical and I couldn’t get a hold of you, where are you? Are you here, come to Sony. ”
It was so much at once, I had to sit.
“Mom’s gone?” I whispered. I stopped and fell into a open chair.
Chuck let out a sob.
“They know for sure?” I asked still in a whisper.
“Yeah they found her in bed. That old brick wall where the chimney was broke, and it fell and the chimney came into the room and… Dad was up in the kitchen waiting for Joanne and Jamie. They found him under the table but something smashed him in the head and he won’t wake up. They want to do something, but there aren’t enough surgeons”
“Where is mom now?”
“They went back to get her and put her in this big truck. I wanted to see her but they said no, it was too bad.” The sobbing took over and she didn’t say anything else. Together we sat in different parts of an immense country and shared the beginning moments of a grief that would be with us forever. I struggled to stand.
“I am in Minnesota they could only get me into Boise, I am going to be there in a couple of hours so I’ll call you again on this number. I am going to get a car and drive down.”
“Please get here fast!”
“I will I promise.”
Another 4 hours in an airport where I could not escape the news that seemed to fill every from page and every screen within sight. I found the gate and tried sleeping through my restless mind, but chairs were too hard and terminal too noisy to accomplish little more than an occasional light doze. The flight to Boise was only 4 hours, but felt like weeks. I hadn’t even thought about the car when I touched down
I checked in with Chuck who sounded better. My dad was going into surgery, and she was able to get some sleep. One of our family friends who worked on the lot at Sony had found her, so she wasn’t alone. And I had the number of their satellite phone to call too. Phone service was slowly being brought back online but not at all reliable. Still no word from Jamie or Joanne.
Outside of the airport, the mid afternoon sun was bright and the comings and goings of travelers seemed to be little interrupted by the earthquake. I followed signs to where the rental car counters were. The rental place down the terminal was surprisingly serene. Boise was an underutilized stop apparently, though there were a half dozen of us trying to figure out a way south. In front of me was a couple on their way home from their honeymoon trying to get back to Riverside. Which was pretty shaken up they told me. They had been stopped in Chicago when their connecting flight was canceled. They had managed to get this far on the same assumption that a long drive to California would be better than a long wait to go nowhere. In an attempt to save clients money and save the precious inventory of cars available, the clerk at the counter suggested we split the cost of the rental and I could drop them off. The idea of sitting in a car by myself letting my imagination fill in the gaps of what I knew and didn’t know sounded horrible. We set off south, not really knowing what any of us would find once we got there.
They were grad students at UC Riverside, working on their theses in geology. They had spent their honeymoon exploring the glacial scarring in eastern Canada. By the time we departed I had been awake for the better part of 36 hours so when David offered to drive I wasn’t going to argue with him. His new husband Chris sat in the front and they talked quietly as I slowly succumbed to my exhaustion in the backseat.
My sleep was deep and my dreams vivid. I was having dinner with my family in our backyard. My dad was grilling and I was being teased because I had suddenly started speaking with a British accent. Throughout the entire dinner though I became more aware of how perilously close to falling off the edge of the yard we all were. Along the fence a canyon had suddenly appeared and no one but me seemed to notice. Paralyzed, I watched my family slip closer and closer to the edge as I slipped away from them. I raised my voice to warn them but I had slipped too far. I was in central London watching them broadcast on the immense displays of Piccadilly Circus. None of them acknowledged the warning, disappearing quietly into the darkness, falling forever into some empty space, out of my life.
I woke up around one in the morning and we were stopped in a town called Ely. It was nearly silent as I milled around the parking lot under a sky overflowing with stars. It was the profound kind of stillness that only occurs in the desert in the middle of the night. The quiet juxtaposed with my current personal chaos slowed down my worried mind.
After so many hours without service my phone suddenly started working again. Chuck had said goodnight at some earlier point in the evening. It was reassuring in a small way to know that I would have someone else there.
I took a shift and continued the drive. Approaching Vegas, the lights from the city were visible from 100 miles out and eventually the early summer dawn began to show grey along the left hand side of the car. The new couple were sleeping in the back, as the earth turned us slowly towards the sun and the desert began to warm again.
The functions of nature continued on, uncaring about the billions of lives running wildly amongst it’s erratic rhythms. Over the course of humanity's existence, when tiny collections of atoms somehow became bodies that somehow became conscious, we stood up tall and looked out at the earth with reverence and cautious trust. We endured through all of the hardships nature could throw at us. Hurricanes and volcanoes and long frozen periods where the arctic drew down from the north and buried our homes and villages in ice. Through it all we thrived. Even when we visited wars and tragedies on one another, we also managed somehow to fall in love and find friendship, usually all at the same time. Eventually the tempest of humankind overcame the hardships, finding ways to cross oceans and continents, pulling up into the storm of humanity all of that rage and laughter and love, sending it all higher and higher into the atmosphere. A continuing narrative that is the ever changing story of who we were. While through out it all, the earth spun indifferent under our feet.
“It was foolish" I thought, “to expect that anyone is safe ever.”
The road began to widen and two lanes became four which became eight. The arms of Las Vegas open and welcoming us through her neon bosom onward home. Across the sparsely populated desert between Nevada and the Pacific Ocean we drove, becoming more anxious as the distance shrank.
Riverside was far inland and much closer to Vegas, so we were there within hours. Though there were tell tale signs of seismic activity, the fallen signs and broken traffic lights not withstanding the city itself seemed to be mostly in tact. People continued to walk on sidewalks and visit grocery stores which were still open and had power.
I dropped the newlyweds off at the campus where their car had been parked. We hugged and said a somber goodbye and never saw one another again.
Outside of Ontario, I passed an enormous red cross camp of white tents stretched out. The sails of a fleet, carrying as many lost souls as were fortunate to make it out from the coast. I wondered as I drove past whether my lost sisters had somehow survived, been swept up into trucks, and out here where the desert had not been as devastated.
It was hours rather than days now that stood between me and a reunion with a family that been picked up and dropped by fate to fall fast onto the hard ground. Whatever it had been before was now shattered. It was the pieces I was going to find, to collect and see what could be done to reassemble as much of it as was possible.
Horrendous traffic lined up behind the many checkpoints and detours until a 3 hour drive became 6 and I finally reached the national guard perimeter. It was Monday afternoon, more than 56 hours had passed since I stood on that street in a London dusk.
I could barely see the top of the skyline in the distance as I pulled up to greet the national guard members who were stationed there. Obviously exhausted but with care in their voices I was advised to not drive any further on the heavily damaged roads.
I left the rental behind to be returned by a kind man who needed to get to Vegas where his daughter lived. His car had been lost in the tremors. I decided it would be best to be driven via a military vehicle. Large trucks would travel along a carefully plotted route that was subject to frequent changes. I joined the company of several passengers going to salvage belongings, identify dead, find whatever loved ones might have survived or like me, potentially do all three.
The vehicle stopped frequently at locations that would be familiar to any tourist, all of which had been turned into shelters. There was to be stops at Union Station, Sunset Junction, The Arclight, Paramount, The Grove, The Beverly Center, among many until Culver and then on to the coast.
Landmarks that should have seemed familiar were completely transformed. The still ongoing tremors had created a landscape that was jagged and uneven, that even when cast in the bright June sunlight was bleak, pained and empty.
We trundled along pavement crevassed and uneven, following roads that I had known my whole life. The city had only just begun the long process of cleaning, it was obvious however that in most cases there would be no way to recover, only rebuild. So many buildings that had stood through all of the earthquakes from the previous century had been completely overwhelmed by the violence of this latest. Block after block there were piles of wood and cement marking the places where strip malls, gas stations, restaurants or residences left only footprints filled with rubble. Many buildings that survived were shaken so loose and cockeyed it was hard to imagine anyone coming back live in any of them again. And yet there were signs of life.
There were those whose homes or apartments had remained upright. The four walls of their homes were still holding the roofs under which these stragglers and optimists stubbornly took shelter. They walked along the route meeting the trucks to gather supplies.
I compulsively checked my phone for signs of service as we rolled past a cinema dome that had collapsed, leaving behind the gnarled remnants of a geodesic skeleton. We would stop at set intervals, like a bus with a group of passengers that were exceptionally desperate get on or off. The truck would fill to capacity at one stop while others would climb down to the broken streets at the next each with their purpose fixed in their minds and either hope or dread buried deep within their hearts. Finally passing under the 10 freeway, I was home in Culver.
The slow pace was excruciating, until at last we were there. I climbed down, walking trepidatiously in the direction of the Sony lot, taking stock of the neighborhood as I went. Noting each instance of a fallen lamp post or collapsed home or the occasional car, shaken from it’s place at the curb into the street. All of which had yet to be cleared
It was now almost dark and the warm summer air called up some reminiscence of an early evening walk with my parents when I was younger. The scent of flowers along the shattered store fronts and cracked flower beds, was sweet. It rose up from their places in the dirt. Though the world around them was changed profoundly, their perfume was still on offer to any fellow survivors. Turning their faces daily towards the sky, they carried on. The ground had shaken them as well, yet they continued to be upright and planted as firmly as they could be. That sensation of warm summer evening, dusky orange sideways sunlight and the gentle fragrance, was bittersweet such that I broke into a run.
I ran until at the gates, wide open and unattended I stopped to catch my breath. I saw her, running fast towards me, looking so much more grown up than I remembered from the last time I saw her only six months ago. We hugged held onto each other and in that embrace found so much of the comfort that we thought we might have spent the rest of our lives missing, and being so relieved, we stood silent facing one another not wanting to be the first to acknowledge face to face what had happened and what would need to happen.
“Dad had his surgery” she finally said. “They don’t know if he will make it but they said it looks good.”
“And the girls?”
She didn’t say anything, just shook her head.
I began walking to a nearby bench and she followed head down watching her feet as they trudged to follow.
“Jo?” I asked, “Jamie?”
She continued to shake her head. Sitting down she continued to stare at her shoes as she struggled to get the words out.
“They had snaps that they were out at some rooftop party way past curfew at some little hotel in Santa Monica,” she paused to collect herself. “And it collapsed. They are still looking but people are saying that there is no way they could have made it. That anyone could be alive.”
I sat while trying to process exactly what that meant and exactly how to react now that I was here with Chuck. Stoic was all I could muster.
Her exhaustion was apparent and she was not doing a very good job of hiding her anxiety or her sadness. I put my arm around her, as we sat quietly crying together, and I looked around at the stages and backlot that had become her home for the last two days.
The red cross had been quick in getting food and supplies in, so there was food and shower facilities and grief counselors were available to talk to anyone who felt “overwhelmed.” Chuck led me to the medical area where doctors from all over the southwest had setup shop to get the wounded the help they needed, including my father.
He was behind a partition where he was out of view of the other patients. And his entire head was bandaged save for the face where his eyes were closed in a serene look of deep comfortable sleep. It seemed cruel to want to wake him, knowing the reality he would come back into. Knowing the names on the list of those who perished included his wife and children. Bringing him out of this crisis only meant that he would have to live the rest of his life in the next.
“He seems like a tough guy,” the doctor said gently as he rounded the partition and closed the curtain. “I think he did all right, but we won’t be able to move him for an MRI until tomorrow at the earliest.”
I had nothing to say except “thank you.”
“If he wakes up will he be ok? Like he was before?” Chuck asked. Her tone was somber but hopeful.
“I hope so. But we can only wait and see.”
That seemed to be enough of an answer. Chuck found the only chair, moving it as close as possible alongside the bed as the doctor stepped out. I needed a shower and sleep but having made the journey that I had, to be near the people I was near, I couldn’t make myself leave the small cubicle. A nurse brought a chair and so I sat quiet and reflective. As I slept intermittently for the hours that followed, I would wake occasionally to see Chuck there with my father, his hand held tightly in her's while she hummed gently. He may have been wandering lost between life and oblivion but Chuck knew the songs he loved, and so to lure him as she could to come back to her, she laid her head on his chest and let the vibrations of her voice resonate through him.
I could not hold on to consciousness for any long stretch, but the moments where exhaustion would wane and my mind was closer to coherence I thought about all of the decisions I had made to get there. What did they say about me? What if I hadn’t gone to London would I be lost to this tragedy as well? I thought about the decisions of those who helped me get to that place and how their decisions reflected who they all became for better or worse. Who am I in all this? I am a Californian, no matter what my address says. I am emotionally prone to crying. I cling fast to those I love and as a result I am not alone in this world. The distances between myself and those I love however great could not muffle the voice of a sister calling out across the distance of an ocean and a continent. A voice that found in London a brother who cared and would come. Heard with the heart. A voice that now called out from life to death, singing songs that once connected millions of people and were now intimately connecting a daughter to her father. I was grieving and broken, but as my senses drifted in and out and the evening became night, I found myself further than I had ever been down the path of discovering exactly who I am.