Water

Rhea placed the same index finger to playfully poke my chest in December 2005.

We had travelled to Poland as a family to connect our girls to their grandmother and married aunt in 2002.

By 2005, Miranda felt confident in supervising her sisters so mum and dad could holiday as a pair.

Rhea chose Thailand as her desired holiday destination. I hedged, unsure, given the region's devastation and slow recovery following the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami.

Rhea weighed her response, "They need the tourists to return."

We had combined bleak, uncomprehending compassion when news of the disaster emerged. We felt the broad sorrow created by an incomprehensible calamity. I tried to picture the real human toll: the uncounted ocean drifted dead, and the living washed out of themselves by inundating water.

We advanced our travel plans; resorts needed tourism income. Like many, we donated to safe drinking water projects after the tsunami. We believed we salved our consciences and contributed more than a passing sorrowfulness. Then, we hid our secret insecurity like the rest of the world. Luckily, chance or God spared us from getting lost in a maelstrom of despair.

Rhea and I flew to Thailand to start a holiday. From the airport, we transferred to our resort hotel. Out and about sightseeing, we saw in the background the unrepaired mess of the tsunami's devastation that was no longer newsworthy. The outward evidence of cataclysm swept back, partially covered.

We observed lives built upon debris. I contemplated; Clean-ups push the wrecked aside. Spying closer, I spotted the cracks and water damage in the repaired buildings. The surface fixes and mends left faded but permanent watermarks and stress fractures like faint scarring on a face.

Once we arrived at our beach resort, we moseyed the local town. We saw piles of garbage, once treasured by individuals, shovelled into the background as trash—crumpled kids' bikes, torn mattresses, and splintered tables higglety-pigglety as forlorn wreckage. While in the foreground, folks tackled making a living and living on. We enjoyed the vibrant market stalls and the tacky neon bars at night. The flashing neon made me speculate that Sodom and Gomorrah could resurrect.

In the days following, we enjoyed tourist tours. We sailed by a small boat to the nearby offshore islands. On another day, we travelled to the hillsides above the resort. We valued a cultural tour of a temple complex and visited an animal sanctuary.

We sparked fun and spent hard. And we ate and drank a tad more, as you do on holidays. The last of seven enjoyable and soothing days rolled on.

Rhea roped me into gift shopping. We bought trinkets to remind ourselves of places visited and jewellery charms for our girls at home. I admired Rhea's patience, a forager finding niche gifts.

But as her rummage meandered on past midday, I asked, lifting my sunglasses, "Can you do this bazaar yourself?"

"Yes, don't go far. I'll meet you here in forty minutes," she agreed.

She gave me a peck on the cheek, and I wandered into the sun. I strolled down the road, vacant window shopping.

Then I saw a wall of photos and photocopied posters dedicated to the tsunami missing. My impulses mixed between looking and not looking. I approached it respectfully. I tried to connect and grasp the individual in each photo—I confronted too many.

The unremitting vanished. Their photos were pasted and posted when loved ones hoped beyond reality. Now, they flapped in a breeze, tattered and disregarded. I contemplated that relatives have no closure when loved ones float in the unknown.

Suddenly, the actual human cataclysmic scale obliterated the generic from me forever. I confronted the gross consumption of human life in a disaster. I faced it, individual by loved individual, including — Patsaporn.

My mind struggled, aghast! I rocked, swayed, stumbled, and leaned on the concrete wall. I pressed my palms hard against my cheeks. Then I stepped back, unbelieving and faced her and every other face.

Statistical human loss raged as nonsense. Over a quarter of a million people had died. Each face forever became an individual undiluted loss. One by one, each person became distinct to me and worthy of eternal remembrance.

Patsaporn's eyes drew even as the photo faded under sunlight. The ruby pendant suspended on her breastbone, a gut kicker as corroborating evidence.

In Thai, the ink on the message below faded to a watermark. My mind churned like a whirlpool. Tears flooded my eyes. A tidal wave surged beyond my fricking comprehension. The swollen, swelling water had snatched and abducted everything living — everything.

Everything, including Patsaporn!

I endeavoured to fill in gaps, impossible to fill. When was this image taken, and by whom? Who loved her? Who cared?

The past developed clarity. The present loomed murkily. I couldn't fathom the ocean stealing Patsaporn. I weighed what holds in life. I recoiled, mentally marooned. Feeling there was nothing to salvage.

My nails scraped through the flaking paint on the wall. My mind raised my cub scout misadventure in the river. I remembered cloudy water. Arms scooped and saved me. It didn't help me understand my bewilderment. Neither did recalling Abby and how Rhea held me later. No one was there to hold Patsaporn. No consolation, we all die unpaired.

It takes the personal to weep to unscaled tragedy. Heaving and trembling at her photo, I bone and sinew sobbed.

Then my mind seethed in a vortex, livid with the world. How could water, life-giving water - the water drop-by-drop we shared - take Patsaporn! Water removed all the nuances of her and other lives.

Gone completely! 

Then, forward, any memory of Patsaporn was drowned by water. I wiped my sunglasses using my cotton shirt. My eyes dried, as eyes do. We move, we breathe, we re-join the living. I reflected on the memory wall since it ceased to be a search board. Too many photos were faded, like any hope.

The photos and photocopies curled at the edges. Many were nibbled and riddled by cockroach droppings. The rain had stained them, too. The high sun eliminated shadows and magnified sadness.

I shuffled and scuffed to the bazaar. On my way, I bumped directly into a roadside fruit stall and stepped blindly off the curb into the path of a honking car. I reeled, dumbstruck in grief, beyond solace, as I gestured an apology to the driver. I passed a bar where I considered gulping a stiff drink but composed myself as I saw the market ahead.

Rhea beamed, waving trinket necklaces. I feigned an interest in her purchase. Dark sunglasses hid my eyes. She showed me sets of earrings for the girls.

My mind swam elsewhere. Where dwelt Patsaporn Kamon Duangnate? In the eternal dimension? Dispersed atoms? Or did she only exist in mental images, snippets of her life held by her significant others and my mind?

Rhea finished shopping. Before she packed our bags, I faked sufficient interest in her gifts back at the hotel.

I slouched quieter than usual at a farewell dinner at an outdoor palm-fringed venue. Mid-meal, I held and swirled my white wine. It swooshed and sloshed on the table.

Staring at it prompted Rhea to inquire, "Are you okay?"

I replied absently, "Ready for home."

I perked to ensure she enjoyed the night. We danced 'til late; I hoped it would help me sleep. My night ended as a toss and turn of restlessness.

I woke early and lost clarity, waterlogged under the shower stream. I clutched at visiting a Buddhist temple nearby to honour Patsaporn's memory. I steadied, insisting to myself that she deserved a credible remembrance. Grasping a lack of authenticity, I banged on the shower screen.

We boarded the plane flight home. In sombre musing, I believed I secured the place for my tribute. My mind mulled doleful between in-flight movies, napping, and plane-style meals and beverages. Rhea accepted my tiredness. I grasped at the temple where Porn favoured me, offering me the gold leaf.

Go back to it!

A week after we returned from our holiday, a compulsion engulfed me. It compelled me to the spring. A place I had avoided returning to because it connected to Jenny, the location of our last day together.

However, I drove there. The entrenched place of my youth was utterly changed like the fates sneered at me. The old orchard was replaced by rows of houses. Where the mulberry branched and fruited, a T- junction was laid to a nearby reserve.

The signage led down a dead-end cul-de-sac, ending in a car park. I parked poorly across the lined spaces as I mulled what had happened to my world. 

I shuffled through the park. Nothing looked familiar enough to guide me, neither trees nor winding tracks. I followed a concrete path that diverged at a sign. Down an incline, I spied the spring.

A high cyclone wire fence surrounded it. In part, a sign read: 'Danger, do not enter, swimming prohibited.'

Where was my spring?

I rued, grasping at Patsaporn's essence. The fence made my mind draw a blank. I couldn't picture her! I webbed the wire through my hands, gripping the mesh until my fingers hurt. My face squeezed, hard-pressed to the wire. Nothing of Patsaporn flashed into my mind. I used the toe of my shoe to dig and lift the wire mesh base, which was impossible as it was secured deep.

At my feet, I noticed the grass was uncut and dandelion-infested. As if on cue, the wind picked up. The breeze blew and sprinkled the dried pappus off their dandelion stems. The universe taunted.

You left her on the curb; you don't deserve to remember her. 

I quivered as Ruby's youthful voice emerged taunting.

Words don't hold. Take in life and move on.

Then I fathomed, bugger words! 

The deeper unsaid remained between Patsaporn and me.

I climbed the fence bereft of common sense. My arms and legs were clumsy as I scrambled, unaided by ungainly awkwardness. I half-slid, tumbled, and sprawled on the inside of the fence.

Finally, I flopped to the edge of the water. I removed my socks and shoes and dipped my feet in the spring. I spotted where a new generation of kids broke the rules on the opposite side, a half-concealed hole in the wire fence.

I was wryly amused.

Between high clouds, the late sun peeked. The breeze stilled. Sun rays hit the springs pool. The water mellowed to a gorgeous deep brown depth matching the colour of Patsaporn's eyes in the corner of a hotel lift.

Porn's name, in translation blessing, became a soothing pulsation through my thoughts.

Then, while my eyes flowed with grief, my toes moved out in gentle lapping circles to the rhythm of her name.