Page 117 of Catch a Kiwi
I sat beside Koro, and he said, “Getting harder for them to say goodbye.”
“Yes,” I said, and then, because if anyplace was safe, it was here, “If I’d known I wouldn’t see my mother again … I wish I’d said more. I wish I’d said everything.”
“I reckon she knew,” he said.
“I hope she did.” I had to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I hardly even felt it at the time. I was numb, I think. There was just too much. Too much pain. Too many … surprises. Now, though—it’s like it’s just happened, even though it’s been almost a year. Feeling againsoundsgood, but honestly, it just hurts, and I want to shut down, or Idoshut down, because I’d rather be numb again. Which is weak. I know it’s weak.” When he didn’t answer, just sat there, I asked, “What was it that you said to Karen, and she said to you?”
“Ah,” he said. “She wanted me to say, ‘Until the next time we breathe together,’ and I said, ‘In time.’”
“Oh.” I considered. “Aren’t those the same?”
“Maybe not.” He leaned his hands on the knobby stick he held despite the wheelchair, looked up at the mountains, glowing pink in the sunset, and said, “You have some sadness, eh. It’s Roman, maybe.”
I said, “I didn’t come here to?—”
“Hard, not having much whanau around you,” he said. “Hard to be far from home. Hard to feel alone.”
“Have you ever done that?” I asked. “Been far away?”
“In the war. The second great war, that was.”
“You fought.”
“I did. A long time ago now. So many good men dead. So many buried far from their ancestors. A brave time. A sad time.”
“I sometimes forget that,” I admitted. “I think I’m the only one who’s suffered, and I know it’s nowhere close to true.”
“It’s no contest,” Koro said. “Pain comes to everybody. And when you feel what you feel, maybe you understand better how somebody else feels. Ki te kore nga putake e makukungia, e kore te rakau e tupu. If the roots of the tree are not watered, the tree will never grow.” Which meant … what? That you had to go deep? That you had to cry? What?
Because he didn’t ask, because he never would, I told him. Or maybe because I didn’t have a choice. The words just tumbled out. “Roman told me he loved me today. He said that scared him. And I ran away and hurt him. What made me do that? Somebody else hurt me, but that person wasn’t him. He was nothing like Roman. And I can’t stand …” I had to stop, look up at the mountains, and breathe. “I can’t stand that I did that. That I took his vulnerable heart, because that’s what it is, and … and stepped on it. But I didn’t feel like I could do anything else. I’m scared. I’m so … I’m scared.” Saying it was that thing again. Raw. Like all my nerve endings were exposed, and I had nothing to coat them with. I longed for the numbness, for the distance, but it wouldn’t come.
“Mm,” Koro said. “Reckon you’re still watering the roots of your tree, though. A vine clings, but it isn’t a tree. Roman isn’t one to want a vine. He may know a thing or two about being a tree.”
“He’s a strong man,” I said. “If I want a man again, he’s going to have to be a strong one. And a good one. I’d have said that I didn’t know what that meant. That none of us is really strong, or really good. That we’re all imperfect. It’s true, but …”
“But life is easier with a partner at your side,” the old man said. “One who’s trying as hard as you. Harder, even, sometimes. My wife, now … when I married her, my heart settled. Too much pain, and too much death, but when she sang …” He sighed. “The world was better. Not easy. But better.”
“You were ready for her,” I said.
“I was,” he said. “And I’m ready again.”
“No,” I said, the word bursting out of me.
“E tata mate, e roa taihoa,” he said. “Death comes closer every day, but by and by never comes nearer. Waiting too long, eh. Hoping to understand, hoping to know. There’s no knowing, only trying. Trying is hard, but trying is the only way.”
“I thought,” I said, doing my best to laugh, “that the wise saying was, ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’”
“No,” he said. “There’s always trying. Trying your best, eh.” He sighed. “Doing your best.”
I wanted to say, “So what’s your advice in my situation? Can you spell it out for me? Because I don’t understand.” But maybe there was no such thing as advice, either. Maybe the secret was that there was no certainty. Maybe there were just the thoughts, swirling in my head like the breeze that was picking up again as the day cooled. The wrinkled skin of the old man’s hands on his stick, fragile as tissue. The understanding that could only come from a heart that had bled and wept. A heart with some scars. And Matiu saying, “Come in the house, Summer, and have a bite to eat while I help Koro to bed.”
All of that was love, wasn’t it?
Murimuri aroha. Love that knows that everything ends.
Afterward, I drove home with Matiu again, and he asked, “Did it help, then?”
“Yes,” I said. “No. I don’t know.”
