I then went back to looking for the key it had wandered off right to the middle of the bed, I took it and opened the chest of course. Right when I was about to peek inside the chest, aunt interrupted, by clearing her throat, " Chris, you know u haven't done anything in this room right?", as embarrassed as I was I quickly closed the chest and agreed with her. She gave me a little smile and told me to start cleaning like I should be, lovingly rubbed my head and gave me a little side hug.
As I watched her walk out of the room, I felt a shiver down my spine thinking about how angry mother would be actually hearing about my insolence. I quickly put the chest back under the bed and started to tidy up the room, it was fairly easy, just that there was too much dust, but other than that it was very easy to clean up the room. I then started to gather up his clothes in a suitcase, his stuff was all in the wardrobe, in a very clear and precise manner.
His clothes were all color coded, his belts all in the manner of how he preferred them to be worn, he had everything planned out in his head before actually wearing it. Still everything was normal there. Given the sudden choice of killing himself, I would have wanted to see a little weirdness in his routine or maybe his clothes or something, but everything was so neat and perfect that him committing suicide become more and more vague by the hour. It occurred to me that he might have found death to be the only way out of his current problem, or maybe, just maybe he could take it anymore and just ended the cycle.
As I started folding up his pants and shirts, his favorite yellowish shirt, which he had always worn on every Saturday which was the one day that we spent as a family and had lunch together. It had a red blotch in it, he had asked mother not to clear it out as it would be a reminder of how happy he was when he heard about my birth. It was a beetroot mark, a very easily removeable stain, but still he wanted to remain on the shirt. Uncle had always been a man of memories, he believed that happiness itself should be celebrated and never forgotten, thus he would keep momentums with him in order to remind himself and reminisce on the wonders of his past experiences which brought him joy.
The shirt was clean, it was squeaky clean, as if the stain had been individually dealt with, that was very strange as he was a very precise man with his decisions, which made me question why he would have changed his mind about the shirt being washed out of the blue. Its yellowish color was also back, it was so bright that it even outshined his white shirts from the bunch. It was if he was trying to erase the memory itself from existence, seemed like he was preparing himself for something bigger which was about to happen.
I stared at the shirt for hours trying to figure out what might have been in uncles head when he took the decision to completely destroy the memory of my birth from his momentums. I guess he found that it was time he let go of a few things which he was using as a crutch to hold on to the past which was long gone and never ever to return.
As I started to put the shirt down I realized that his lucky socks weren't both there, only his right side was present in the drawers, it was very strange, his favorite clothing had seemed to be misplaced or something. And that on its own was enough to trigger that not everything was perfect with uncle. It made me think about the conversation him and I had a few minutes before the massacre occurred yesterday.
He had sat me down in this very room yesterday, he told me to take a seat on the bed as he sat right on the counter. And the weirdest conversation occurred. He said, " Chris you might loose me sooner than you think, so if there is anything which you would like u to discuss I want you to tell me now, I need you to be precise in everything which you share with me today." And of course I told him that there wasn't anything which I needed to discuss with him then, I didn't really even need advice on anything at the moment.
What he said next still doesn't sit well with me even now, he said, " if you ever come up with the stupid idea of following me to the place which I'm choosing not at my own will to go to, I'll never forgive you. Know that your soul will never find piece if you ever do such a thing. Son I don't hate you, for god sakes I love you to death, I would die for you champ. Fall in love boy, I want to be able to sleep peacefully knowing that you will be able to love unconceivably. Get heart broken, move on, love again and get your heart broken again. I want you to let the cycle of life take place. I need you to be able to hate love but love it non the less. I love you kid, I'll love you in the beyond as well. My dear son I want you to feel pain, I want it to consume you. I want you to wish death upon yourself just to run away from it, but you are never to let yourself be killed by it. I want you to grow.
I need you to be the one person who can live in pain with a smile on his face. Pain isn't the enemy honey, trust me as much as it breaks you, living in it helps you heal the wounds which itself caused in the beginning. Honey I don't want hate to consume you, but self-hate should be somewhere in your mind at some point, cause the only way for you to truly feel love is to actually have hate to begin with. I know it sounds twisted and weird right now but everything will make sense when the right time comes. Never forget what you experience cause that my son grooms you to be better. "