The Astonishing Color of After(108)
“I know,” I say. “I know. I’m going to do it. I have to do it. I’m just…”
“Scared?” Axel offers.
“All I have are works in progress! Everything with Mom… it kind of brought me to a halt.”
“So why are you still talking on the phone? Get to work.”
I sigh again. “Okay, okay.”
“I’ll talk to you when you’ve done enough to deserve a break.”
“Uggghh.” I flop down on the couch, going totally horizontal. “But at least I know what I have to do.”
“What?” he says, though he sounds like he knows what I’m going to say.
“I have to break out the colors.”
There’s a grin in his voice. “Yes. Yes, you do.”
107
Dad insisted on paying for Axel’s ticket to thank him for taking care of Meimei. Caro and her family are in France for the month, but all four of them are coming to meet us in Berlin for the show.
And somehow, I’ve put together a portfolio. A series that I think Mom would be proud to see.
The three of us take up a whole row on the airplane: Dad in the aisle seat, Axel in the middle, and me on the inside, next to the window.
I think of the pictures I made, stored safely away in my artist’s folio in the overhead compartment. Twenty-two hours until the gallery opens. The plane slants up into the sky, skating through the air, the pressure tipping us back against our seats. I take Axel’s hand and turn to look out the window. Below us, the ground shrinks away. The cars are toy-sized, then ant-sized, then nothing.
Cottony wisps stream past. We cut through their layers. We level off above the clouds into an unbelievably bright expanse of blue.
The plane angles and tilts, and I fight the gravitational force, leaning to press my face into the glass. I catch a glimpse of the clouds below, and the edge of our shadow upon them, shaped like a bird.
108
THE REMEMBERER SERIES
Eight Surrealist Drawings by Leigh Chen Sanders
Each 61 x 91 cm
Charcoal and gouache
#1. FAMILY TREE
#2. PIANO
#3. EMILY DICKINSON
#4. INCENSE
#5. RED BIRD
#6. CRACKS IN THE SKY
#7. SISTERS & GHOSTS
#8. CICADAS
Artist’s Statement:
What is memory? It’s not something you can physically hold, or see, or smell, or taste. It’s just nerve impulses jumping between neurons. Sometimes it’s a matter of choice. Other times it’s self-preservation, or protection.
This series is a memoir of sorts, born out of the excavation of my family history. Each piece represents a different memory found. The gradual introduction of color from one piece to the next is meant to illustrate a developing epiphany. All of them culminate in the final piece, Cicadas, which is a surrealistic mosaic piece done in full color: A mother, father, and daughter seesawing together on a park playground. Giant bird flying through a wide sky. Man on a plane. Girl in an apple tree.
Memories that tell a story, if you look hard enough. Because the purpose of memory, I would argue, is to remind us how to live.
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Author’s Note
This novel first began taking shape in 2010 and has made its way through several different iterations, most of them vastly different from one another. The only thing in common across all the drafts was how it was always a story about family and identity and the different facets of love.
Then, in 2014, my family lost one of our own to suicide. Half a year later I began rewriting this book for the umpteenth time, and the complicatedness of that grief stuck in my brain and glued itself to my words. I didn’t mean for all this to work its way into my writing, but novels like to develop minds of their own.
Here are a few statistics:
Someone dies by suicide every 11.9 minutes.
It’s the tenth-ranking cause of death in the United States.
For every death by suicide there are twenty-five attempts.
Those were taken from the American Association of Suicidology’s official data in 2015—the most recent I could find.
It was important to me that while Leigh’s mother had experienced some terrible things in her life, there wasn’t a reason to explain her having depression. She, like so many people all over the world, simply fell victim to a terrible disease. It’s a disease we are still learning to fight.
Depression manifests differently in every person; the symptoms can vary. Not every depressed person will act the way Leigh’s mother does. Treatment can help so much—it can lower or even eliminate the risk of suicide. Strong social support has also been proven to play a big role in preventing suicide. If you suspect someone in your life of being suicidal, please reach out to them. Please, talk about depression. Talk about other forms of mental illness.
Talk about suicide—research has shown that talking about it does not increase ideation or risk, and actually can make a significant difference.