I don't think any introduction is
necessary. It'll be fairly obvious who the narrator is and who he is talking
about.
His Death
He died in my arms.
Seeing death as the end of life
is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean. [1]
He's not truly dead, though. He lives.
He lives in every ray of false sunshine, in every breath of manufactured
air, in the shine of every star in the psuedo nightsky. He lives in us,
in our children, in our partners.
But he died in my arms.
The bitterest tears shed over
graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. [2]
I feel responsible.
It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my
father's fault. My mother had nothing to do with his death, as she may
have even been unaware that he lived in the first place. It wasn't negligence
on my part that led to his downfall.
Still I feel as though I could have
done something, could have prevented it. But my first legacy deserted me
and I knew of no way to stop it from happening. My second legacy had quit
long before, for surely a truly dependable person would never have let
the situation spiral down so far, fly so close to the center of the storm.
There must have been a way to prevent
it! If only I had been more inquisitive, had questioned my grandfather
about my father's friends, had probed into the life of I man I never had
the priviledge of knowing. If only I had reached out when I had the chance,
when he first recognized my name. I know it wasn't my fault, but still
the guilt constricts my heart and ties tortuous knots in my stomach.
When my father died, I didn't cry.
When my father's best friend, a man I never even knew existed until I was
nine, died, the tears ran down my face in twin trails of salty baptism.
I miss my father like a blind man misses sight - with the wistfulness of
having never truly known it. I miss Owikawa more than I miss my father.
A great opportunity, like a feast, was laid down before me and I let it
be ripped away by the hands of hungry scavengers. I was blind to his pain
until I was holding it in my own hands. I let both him and my father down.
I failed.
And he died in my arms.
. . . The fabric of life is as
weak as the wind. [3]
Whenever I visit the Digital World,
I find myself craning my neck, looking up, straining my eyes. I'm always
hoping to catch a sparkle in the air, a little shimmer in the sunshine
that glows for one moment and then flits away again. Every time I see little
ethereal wings reflecting multicolored light, I feel a tiny bit of absolution.
In the end, despite his pain and loneliness, despite his actions and misdeeds,
Owikawa found the peace he never experienced in life. The children who
chase butterflies in the Digital World have no idea that he nearly destroyed
everything and then gave his life to heal it.
Hikari and Takeru believe that he's
an angel now, an image that makes me smile when I picture the contrast
of white wings against his dark coat and ebony hair.
In my arms, a man died. In my arms,
an angel was born.
End.
[1] David Searls
[2] Harriet Beecher Stowe
[3] Häfiz
Endnote: Eh . . . I started writing
this and had to take a few hours to go to classes, so when I came back
to finish it, I think I lost whatever track my mental train was running
on. Go on - let me know what a great injustice this did to the show and
to Iori.
