Perspective

This is Mike. He's my cousin. About a month ago, he was accidentally shot in the face with a hunting rifle during an argument with his wife about taking care of the kids. They're putting his face back together now. First they sewed his lips back together. They reconstructed his tongue and put it back in his mouth. Next they built him two new eye sockets and two new cheekbones out of metal and grafted skin from his back to cover his face. He won't have a roof in his mouth or a nose for another few months at least. His feeding tube and stoma will suffice.



Mike and I got our first tattoos together. That one on his arm. It's like two shooting starts intercrossing, except that it's two moons. Two shooting moons, greeting each other, holding each other. Mine is some Chinese letters on the inside of my forearm, saying "Life is created in each moment"



I can't even begin to imagine what life purpose this will serve for him. Good thing I don't have to know. I haven't been asked for that information. I really just want to be a little numb to this for just a little while longer. I will see him on Tuesday. I will feel it then. I will want to feel it then.




Mike and his older brother, Charlie, practicing throwing knives at a watermelon in our Oma's kitchen.



Us having swimming races and Easter egg hunts.



The matching red scooters for Christmas one year.



Me slamming Mike's fingers in the door when he tried to walk in on me taking a bath once.


Mike holding his baby daughter this last Christmas. I had never seen him so caring or peaceful.


The pot we'd smoke. The stories we told each other of our dark sad lives. The goodness and peace we wished for ourselves and our future.



I will feel it then. For now, I exist in Seattle, in my bathrobe after a shower, a long mess of trust issues and medical blather and piles of paper and mounds of books and yarn and dishes and laundry and House DVD's and nerves and hopes and dreams.



Do people ever fully integrate all their multiple roles and egos and sides of themselves? Perhaps only the simple ones. But is life ever simple?