The Very Last Thing
“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
+Genesis 3:19
You are inconsiderately shaken awake by your older than average aged mother. She pre-maturely looks well over sixty years old, there with her wrinkled face and spotty whitened hair, notably at the roots, unnaturally dyed poorly, of course on her own since your impetuous father left the two of you unaided for the glamorous New York City. “For a better life for all of us,” he pitifully stuttered in an attempt to convince himself more so than anyone else.
New York City; the world’s capital; the Big Apple is your distant terminus once the unending fourteen hour and fifteen-minute red-eye flight from Seoul, South Korea, lands. You have mysteriously heard so little about, though meticulously read so much of this New York City during the infinitesimal time allotment of internet access your family was permitted in the pathetic business center (if you could call it that) of the frail apartment complex you lived in with only your weakened mother in the infamous North Korea. You escaped, but defection was only the beginning of an everlasting journey.
You attend to her unpleasant voice, hoarsened from decades of smoking smuggled Newport Classics, to inform you, “We’re about to land, Dal. Wake up”. You realize that you are resting your head on an obese man with a white beard and red hair, presumably returning home. He snarls toward you with an expression of discontent, but you are unsympathetic given the vicissitude of your entire emigrant circumstance.
On the intercom, you hear the pilot’s surprisingly British accented voice declare imminent landing, so you feverishly brace yourself by grasping the seat in front of you. Your ears uncontrollably pop as the plane precipitously descends toward the ground. The rubber of the tires abruptly meets the concrete of the runway at JFK International. The landing was a success, though bumpier relative to other flights, as expressed by fellow passengers near you. You hear grateful applause from the front.
You eagerly await your luggage, but the first round does not produce your bags. Neither does the second, nor the third, nor the tenth. You stubbornly mutter to your mother, “Our luggage isn’t coming. It’s lost”. And you hopelessly feel as if all is lost. All hope, love, peace. North Korea is an undeniably soulless place where citizens banally exist, but you were a family there. All is lost. So you two, together, walk to the appropriately titled “Lost Baggage” section.
Conveniently, you speak English because it was a language option you were allowed to study in school and are therefore able to articulate your situation to the stern man working the desk.
He apathetically proclaims, “Your luggage was lost, kid. We’ll get it to the address you provided as soon as we retrieve it.”
You murmur, “Okay that’s fine, but where is it? All our stuff is in there, my-”,
You are rudely interrupted, “There’s no telling, kid. We’ll find your stuff. We always do. This is no exception.”
Without another word, unencumbered, you leave with your mother at your side holding her hand more firmly than she is holding yours and make your way to a food kiosk. Neither of you had eaten meat for several years, five or six, certainly not more or less, but you each order a chicken sandwich. You wanted fries with that, but they were unavailable. And although it is frowned upon to order food upon arrival versus departure, you are starving because the noodles served on the flight were inedible; your stomach turned the second your olfactory faculties arrived to their senses. She consumes hers, you inhale yours, while the two of you await a cab outside under a rickety covering protecting you from the pouring rain.
A Middle Eastern man speedily driving stops just short of a significant puddle. You breathe a sigh of relief as your Reebok sneakers are left unscathed. He politely situates her, then you, no bags, and together you drive off. The rain is increasing by the minute, and you can barely perceive your surroundings. Is this even New York City? Is this now Home?
“I know you hate the idea of moving here, but your father is a brilliant man. It’ll work out. This is an improvement from home, if you could even call it that,” your mother unconvincingly discusses with you.
“But it was home, and it was shattered the second Dae-Seong left us in the dust. Don’t deny it,” you bluntly state, neglecting respect for your father by referring to him by his name. Your argument is valid, though, and your mother knows it, regardless of her unwillingness to accept it. After a lamenting exhalation, you continue, “This is the end, isn’t it? I read about how all the countries hate America. Russia, North Korea, China. They all-”
“This isn’t the end, Dal, you’ll know exactly when that is,” she retorts apologetically with her natural frown. She no longer smiles. She used to, rarely, only on occasion, but you swear you do not remember the last time she fancied a smile on her face, which is unfortunate because she had a nice smile. A smile from her nowadays is sure to be a sign of the end of the world.
“Oh yeah?”, you question skeptically. “How will I know?”
“You just will. It’ll be bright.” She pauses. “Then loud. It’ll be the very last thing you ever experience. You’ll know.”
You do not question her knowledge of the event she presciently proclaims; you do not doubt her. You choose to accept it as true, without interrogating further for veritable grounding. And so you two sit silently throughout the remainder of the ride.
The driver yammers in Arabic on the phone, Bluetooth device shoved firmly in his left ear, responsibly for safety precautions. His music plays softly in the background, practically inaudible, to his incomprehensible conversation, likely an argument given the heightened, stressed, tonal fluctuations. Though you cannot determine the song, you notice the genre, classic rock. Probably Led Zeppelin. The song plays for just over eight minutes, declaring, “How everything still turns to gold.”
As you enter Midtown, the rain slightly eases, and the temporary transparency affords you the opportunity to see that Times Square is overwhelming in every way, luminescing as a mosaic through the droplets. “The city that never sleeps,” you implicitly think to yourself. “Bright then loud,” you continue.
It is awe-inspiring, though everything is still slightly suppressed by the rain. Your sight is distorted, the sounds of the city are repressed. It looks almost as though the environs are melting away. You arbitrarily ponder your life for an instant, focusing on your hardships, and then by virtue of sonder consider everyone else. You notice a multitude of humans, seemingly billions of individuals, each with a unique story, traversing the walkways, despite the rain. There are obvious homeless people on the street, begging for nickels and dimes and praying for something more. You further observe hopeless individuals in empty suits screaming on their cell phones, only Heaven knowing the inflated world-altering events they are discussing.
You then finally see people bantering while crossing the street. In their hands, hot dogs and sodas for nourishment, umbrellas for shelter.
Time decelerates.
And you see a young couple interlocking hands, laughing with each other as their fingers break free. He skips two steps forward, turning to face her, and gestures toward her performing a strange sway. Dancing in the rain. You see her joyous face glittering, eyes tearing resulting from an overflow of happiness, tears now dripping from the ends of her eyes, rolling down her cheeks. He must have told her he loved her. Maybe for the first time. And then he danced for her to prove it.
The cab drives onward. From the crowd you ambiguously fixate on one girl, roughly your age, with wavy, beautiful, long blonde hair. She is holding her mother’s hand. The mother is speaking on the phone through her AirPods; she is glowing and enjoying the conversation as well as her daughter’s company. Her daughter is licking an ice cream cone, strawberry splattered across her face. She is attempting to keep herself dry under the shelter her mother provides.
Time altogether stops. And everything stands still.
Suddenly, you witness the engulfing terror stricken on the girl’s previously delighted face as she drops her ice cream cone. Anguish and fear overtake her, abjecting every fiber of joy not only from her life, but also from yours. The color from her face escapes as she turns pastel and falls to her knees, concurrently releasing her hand from her mother’s.
You look around and the billions of bystanders cease their preoccupations and gawk at the sky. Every one of them hypnotically stares. One by one. Then all at once. Frozen.
And you, consumed, look up, to the otherworldly unfolding before you.
The brightness, blinding; then the sound, deafening; and you, despondent.
Your mother, a religious woman, habitually performs the sign of the cross and mumbles a prayer to herself as she closes her eyes and looks to the floor. You, not one to ever consider such things, instinctively do the same. Your mother unbuckles her seatbelt freeing herself as she embraces you, tightly, for the first time in years. She smiles. Then you find your irrevocable peace and your fleeting Home in both her and now in this world.
The very last thing left you with your final memory.
The ground from which you were taken erupted and shattered into dust.
And to dust you returned.
