The following is a guest post, written by my husband, Andrew Cheung:
First it was his phone. We have no idea where it is. We’ve searched the house high and low. We don’t know who had it last. Julia thinks I was the last to go through it. Maybe it was a family member who borrowed it? Maybe we last had it on our Colorado vacation in August? Losing the phone – so much an extension of him – seems symbolic.
A few days ago, I began lamenting how his friends -and perhaps even me as well – will lose memory of him as we all move on with their lives. For some reason, I thought of one of his classmates and how she thoughtfully paid tribute to Evan with a sand drawing on the beach during her summer vacation. I wondered if his friends would think to stop by his grave if they ever visited Vancouver. And how that would seem less and less likely as time went on. Would I stop?
Then today hit. Ashley hung a glass ornament Evan made when he was five on the stairway bannister. I bumped into it. It dropped to the ground. The “Tis the season to be jolly” ribbon that once held the ornament still tied to the banister. The rest of it – The glitter of Evan’s life and work now scattered across the floor, at the foot of the stairs. ‘Eva..’ ‘0…’ Barely held together. ‘n’ and ‘9’ left in pieces next to it. Julia commented: “Evan probably would have loved the image,” because he identified so much with it. A fitting symbol of Evan’s life and death – in his fall, in his death, the fullness of his pain (and his beauty) scattered for all to see.
We stood. Stunned. Staring at the mess. Wanting to clean it up quickly… because it’s glass on the floor. But the moment was sacred. Reverent. We pause to reflect. It seems too callous to sweep it up and discard it so quickly. But life moves on. Just as quickly as it happened, I vacuum it up and nothing remains… except the memory that it happened… just like the stairs outside the building where he fell. I snap a few photos to remember. I walk to the trash can and open it up… But I can’t yet throw it out. I want to glue the pieces together again. I want to see if it’s possible to mend this broken glass. Alas, it’s not. Although I vacuum up the small shards and glitter, I can’t throw away the larger pieces. They sit on our kitchen counter still as I write this.
It hits me again. Slowly and surely. Losing his phone. Losing his ornament. Losing him. Losing it. Like the ocean waves slowly eroding a beach shoreline over time, memories of our dear Evan ebbing away in the ordinary seems only inevitable. And it’s only been less than six months. But can it not be? Please?!