Sons of Lethe

We let our son stay with us but had no desire to bond in the last few weeks of his life. We came into his room rarely just to make sure he was still alive. All night long, his raspy breath filled both floors of suburban home.

He died in bed.

We did not approve of his lifestyle, and his disease which was its consequence. His partner lurked outside our door patiently waiting for us to acknowledge him and invite him in. He rarely spoke to us except to say, “How is he?” We would wave him off. And he would return to sit under a large maple tree in the front yard.

Our son who we remember lovingly had been a fine baseball player in high school. Second base. A handsome figure with tanned and freckled cheeks. His blond hair stood out against the purple cap he would wear that left a permanent indentation in his shaggy mane.

But our son was not ready for his studies. We paid for tutoring but knew he would never be accepted into a good college of divinities. We planned on sending him to a monastery or perhaps worse yet sending him to a philosopher who we would have to send a small stipend to for the rest of our lives so our son could traipse back and forth in a garden or mall-walk while muttering axiomatic phrases. When he disappeared into the desert, we could at least take comfort that although his spiritual awakening would be illusory it would be free. At the time, we appreciated that his partner had convinced him to do this.

But he returned to us: ropey and barefoot. His skin smelled of myrrh, and his breath of hyacinth. The infection from his apotheosis spread so fast that he could not be cured. Boys are always promiscuous, and they had let themselves be penetrated by divine rays. Where he stepped, irises would break through the earth or carpet. He ruined much of our landscaping and décor. We will have to remodel.

He wandered our house for several days not eating despite food being left for him. He would thank us for the offering and place the palm of his hand on our foreheads, curing the arthritis in my wife's hands and the squamous cell clusters on my face. We were offended that he so callously deprived us of our afflictions, our right to suffer, as we aged.

In the last week, he kissed us before going to his room still adorned with baseball trophies. His purple cap hung from a hook at the back of the door. His presence in the room profaned our memories. We tried to get him to stay in the guest room, but by the time he made it the bed he was too exhausted to move. We could not move him as obsidian laced with gold began to spread from a sore on his upper lip. As the mineral slowly replaced his flesh, the floral reek became more powerful. For days, we had to smell the wistful odor of an early summer night as this boy became the incarnation of the setting sun.

When he finally died, there was no funeral per se. We moved his crystalized body into the backyard where he made a lovely addition to our rock garden. We packed his high school keepsakes. We moved box after box into our scrapbooking room. Neither of us would deign to actually pull together something so déclassé, but we enjoy buying the empty books and decorative corners for pictures.

We expected our son’s partner to leave. But he remained motionless in full lotus under our maple tree for three days.

As we packed, I watched our son’s partner from the upstairs window trying to hiding myself behind lace curtains we bought in Europe. The curtains were tatted by three sisters working in a storefront off the canals of Bruges. They would sit smelling the stagnant waters and quietly chatting about the future, the present and the past.

I saw that he was not mourning our son. His partner was merely in attendance. And this was unforgivable. How could he love without mourning?

On the fourth day, we pretended that we did not see him as he crawled over the privacy fence. He stripped his stonewashed jeans and threadbare t-shirt from his body. Ignoring the stone tied with black rope, he walked into the rock garden. He was caked with dirt that creased around his neck. When he rolled over in the sand white grains cling to the curls of his chestnut-colored pubic hair.

The next morning hoisted himself off the ground his body racked with pain. He held the wooden rake as a crutch. Each step seemed to be on glass and as he walked his glutes tensed. He shuffled through the sand demolishing the lines our gardener had raked just a few days previously. He draped himself over our son’s mineralized body.

I rushed to finally confront him. My wife in a large straw sun bonnet and thick dark glasses followed me. He moved his lips as he licked them. They were dry. I wished I had a small white bottle of medicated petroleum jelly to give him. His skin had become like a mortadella of quartz and electrum. Sand clung to the folds of his skin. An injury on his thigh was crystalizing. Geometric formations jutted from his muscles. I placed my T-shirt over his crotch to give him some privacy. But he tossed it off, just wanting to get a few more solar rays and to lie next to our son.

He was not my son, but his presence was the pointed recognition of the absence of my son. As the sun’s light encapsulated him, rendering his body into its final apotheotic state, I pressed my lips to his and inhaled the stale breath that at one point sustained my boy.

My wife rolled her eyes.