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Back The Presence of Absence
Chapters (40)
  1. also by simon van booy
  2. the presence of absence
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. the presence of absence
  8. Part One
  9. 27.
  10. 26.
  11. 25.
  12. 24.
  13. 23.
  14. 22.
  15. 21.
  16. 20.
  17. 19.
  18. 18.
  19. 17.
  20. 16.
  21. 15.
  22. 14.
  23. 13.
  24. 12.
  25. 11.
  26. 10.
  27. 9.
  28. 8.
  29. 7.
  30. 6.
  31. 5.
  32. 4.
  33. 3.
  34. 2.
  35. 1.
  36. [quick black]
  37. [scene change]
  38. Part Two
  39. acknowledgments
  40. a note about the author

Don’t fret. This isn’t going to be a work like those others I’ve made. I will never actually see this one the way you see it, feel it as you feel it in your hands⁠—which is okay, as it’s more a prayer of gratitude to nothing for everything.

At least that’s how I feel now: finally happy enough to give up memory for good. Not that I have a choice when it comes to what I retain and what I relinquish. Some of the treatments have been difficult. Not the pain so much as the sickness after, but as I mentioned, that’s not really relevant to this story.

So.

Here we are.

In dawn’s path.

I can’t hear birds yet.

The sky is just a weak glow with a few purple cheeks.

Hadley usually stays late enough for me to fall asleep. I’m looking forward to the possibility. In the early days, she would stay all night, lying next to me on the bed, atop the sheets. The night nurse didn’t mind.

When Jeremy stayed, he would sleep upright in a chair with a hospital blanket, though by morning it usually lay in a soft mound at his feet, which were usually turned inward, giving him the air of a child.

Hadley and Jeremy are quite used to me being in this place, and both are ready for what is going to happen.

I’m ready, too. Everything has been talked through. Life will go on, just not for me.

If I don’t see another dawn, it’s because I am a part of it.

Look for me there.

18.

Everything I’ve told you so far, while being the truth of what I can remember, is also a fiction, as past events can only be recollected in the room of the present. I’m different now from the person I was when the event took place, and so it’s possible I am recalling details more pertinent to my current self, which thereby invalidates the memory. Alternatively, I might be remembering events in the context of how I felt then, which does not reflect my current state.

And so there’s always tension. Selves that cannot be reconciled⁠—except perhaps through the absence of memory in meditation or prayer.

You wouldn’t believe the dreams I have here. Sometimes they help me understand things. The worst one was perhaps the most helpful. In the dream, I died and found myself in a tearoom with people I knew decades ago. They all looked as I remembered them and spoke as if no time had passed between us. Was this some version of heaven? The land of milk and two sugars? I was dead but conscious and comfortable.